Bargains aplenty in coronavirus-hit Europe – but there aren’t many takers

Travellers with a healthy appetite for risk can find bargains while airlines and hospitality businesses shrink, writes Simon Calder

Piazza del Duomo in Milan, normally filled with tourists, stands empty as the coronavirus outbreak continues to grow (Reuters)

With all this bad news around, you probably need a break. And right now, prices are better than ever.

On Thursday evening you can fly on British Airways from Heathrow to Rome (and check in a bag), stay for three nights in a three-star hotel (with breakfast) and fly home for £139 all-in. Similar deals are available to Milan, Venice and Pisa – a short hop from Florence.

“I have never seen the Uffizi so empty,” says the noted cultural tour director James Hill, who lives in Italy.

This, he says, is an excellent time to visit the nation’s great sights: “The Vatican Museums yesterday were actually manageable for a change. Asian group tourism is drastically reduced at present.”

The trouble for the travel industry is that there are very few takers for the bargains unfolding across Europe and the world.

(Independent/WHO (Independent/WHO)

At around the time that the coronavirus was mutating in Wuhan, central China, the UK’s tourism industry was looking forward to a healthy year: 2020 is supposed to be a spell of certainty between the uncertainty since the EU referendum and the inevitable damage from a hard Brexit.

But we are not even two months into the year and the omens are, frankly, awful.

London is the world centre of aviation, with many more passengers flying in and out of the capital’s six airports than any other city. That is normally a great strength. But right now it feels like a liability.

UK tourism business are suffering because, during low season, Chinese tour groups traditionally fill rooms from Edinburgh to Bath. They are not travelling. Europeans, already wary of the extra red tape of Brexit and the warmth (or otherwise) of their welcome, can add “uncertainty” to the list of reasons they don’t want to visit Britain.

Uncertainty kills travel. If the hundreds of concerned people who have contacted me since the start of the week are representative of many more, thousands of travellers have abandoned expensive and much-anticipated trips.

Normally the dismal weather this month would have spurred a surge in holiday bookings, whether late-notice packages to the Canaries or dream trips to Asia. But travellers are reticent, particularly given the advice on the Foreign Office website which warns against all-but-essential travel to areas affected by coronavirus.

The mood has shifted this week. Initially there seemed to be an doubly daft assumption that a trip to a Covid-19-hit location would inevitably mean picking up the virus, and that infection meant certain death. Both probabilities are tiny, and when multiplied together, vanishingly low.

But now, with images of Brits being confined to barracks in Tenerife, Milton Keynes or Wirral, there is a more rational concern: being forced into quarantine for a fortnight. For holidaymakers, returning two weeks late could jeopardise family commitments, or damage a small business.

Bigger businesses, who have been bankrolling the major airlines by keeping the premium cabins full, are now reluctant to dispatch executives to the corners of the world. A duty of care hangs heavy for some, while others simply don’t want their top team holed up in Hong Kong if the city goes into lockdown.

When IAG – British Airways’ parent company – reveals its results for 2019 on Friday, the retrospective numbers will look good. But in his last financial presentation, chief executive Willie Walsh will warn of a sharp downturn in business – mirroring similar announcements by carriers in North America, continental Europe and (especially) Asia.

Any profits the airline business was hoping collectively to make this year have already been wiped out. Hotel groups, tourism attractions and the cruise industry are steeled for the worst slump so far this century.

Survival is now the name of the travel game. Yet while airlines and hospitality businesses shrink, travellers with a healthy appetite for risk can find amazing deals – and escape the crowds.