Britain’s inbound tourism faces winter after winter

Analysis: Just at the time when Britain’s tourism enterprises could have been drumming up business, writes Simon Calder, the message went out: ‘Stay away from the UK’

Just as the nation had built up a strong gravitational pull, coronavirus – and the government’s reaction to it – is weakening the UK’s attraction (Getty)

Much energy has been expended, including by the travel desk of The Independent, exploring the prospects for summer trips abroad for British holidaymakers. They were beginning to blossom in early May, only for the government to announce its blanket quarantine policy, four weeks ahead of its introduction on 8 June.

The timing – two months after the coronavirus crisis had peaked, and (according to many) four months too late to do any good – was widely deplored for depriving UK travellers of their freedom to explore.

But the insistence that anyone entering Britain (even from countries with negligible infections) to self-isolate for 14 days did much more damage. The measure, widely believed to be a political stunt to deflect attention from the care-home scandal, stopped inbound tourism dead in its tracks.