Travel sector faces grim future without tailored support

THE Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association (SPAA), is warning without a tailored package of help for the sector, Scotland risks losing its travel industry.

A recent members showed 37% of respondents indicated they had sustained losses to date of more than £1million with 26% experiencing losses to date of between £101k and £500k.

Since lockdown, 80% of travel agents have experienced a drop in business of over 75%. This was compounded when Spain was removed from the safe list, with 100% of agents reporting no bookings or a significant drop in bookings at this time.

For Carmen Irving, Madcat Travel business owner, based in Aberdeen, the impact of Covid-19 has been hard-hitting.

Having had no new bookings since the start of lockdown and a change in personal circumstances, she has returned to lecturing four days a week.

Carmen said: “It’s been pretty tough.  I was just in my initial years of building the company so for me it couldn’t have been worse timing.

“I knew that I probably needed a third or fourth to get to where I wanted it to be and give me an income.  But then Covid hit.

“I’ve not had any bookings since the beginning of the lockdown when I definitely would have expected some over that period.

“The business is still running and I’m still in touch with my customers.  The only thing I’ve been dealing with is people changing their holidays to next year.

“It’s so much up in the air.”

The SPAA have said traveller confidence is virtually non-existent and fallen even further with the ‘safe list Hokey Cokey’ where countries are in and out of the quarantine requirements at a few hours’ notice.

Carmen agrees the 14-day quarantine needs to be assessed.

She said: “Some of my customers I’ve spoke to have been willing to travel but because of their job they just can’t afford to self-isolate for 14 days.  It’s a big deterrent.

“People can’t afford to have a month off work.”

Joanne Dooey, SPAA president said: “We have written to the Scottish and UK governments throughout the pandemic, advising them of the perilous state of the travel sector in Scotland and did so again last week.

“We have asked them to consider urgently a tailored extension of the furlough scheme to March 2021, a more nuanced approach to quarantine, support through rates and rent deferrals or reductions and robust airport testing.

“Outbound travellers are worth £1.7 billion to Scotland and outbound travel sustains more than 26,000 jobs for our country.

“We’re facing a tsunami of redundancies in the Scottish travel sector. More than 50% of travel agents in our survey have either made redundancies already or have notified employees that their positions are at risk.

“Almost 90% of travel agents tell us that they have furloughed all or some of their staff, with 75% of these agents furloughing ¾ of their staff or more. Without an extended furlough scheme, or some form of tailored support, there will undoubtedly be waves of further job and business losses.”