Germany restricts travel from Britain due to Covid variant

The main headlines: 

• UAE, Rwanda and Burundi added to travel 'red list'
• Tourism suffered the 'worst year in history,' according to WTO research
• Thousands rush back from Dubai to meet 1pm travel ban deadline
• Countries on UK travel 'red list' have ten times lower Covid case rates than Britain
• Summer staycation searches have doubled year-on-year, says Airbnb

Catch-up with the rest below and join us again on Monday.

Elizabeth Svensson (left), 35 and Klaudia Zakrzewska, 27, from London, arrive back in the UK at Heathrow Terminal 2, after being on holiday in Dubai for 15 days.

They are among the thousands of travellers who caught flights back to the UK following the announcement that the UAE would be added to the travel ban list from 1pm today.

Sweden's Health Agency said on Friday it had recommended the government require travellers show a negative Covid-19 test result before entering the country, in a bid to keep new variants of the virus from spreading.

"The situation is changing extremely rapidly in the outside world and different virus variants can be found in more countries than those we currently know," it said in the press release.

The inhabitants of Greece’s islands have begun receiving coronavirus vaccines as the country looks ahead to what it hopes will be a busy summer tourist season.

Islanders, particularly the elderly, are anxious to get vaccinated so that they are protected from infection when holidaymakers arrive from around the world.

The Greek government has embarked on a plan to send vaccines to islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas, many of them far-flung and hard to reach.

“The inoculation of the population on the islands is in progress. It’s a complex scheme due to the distinctive geography of the island regions,” said Vassilis Kontozamanis, the health services minister.

Read the full story.

The winners of the Travel Photographer of the Year have been released. Here's a small taste of the best entries: 

In her new series, Joanna Lumley travels across Great Britain in search of the nation's hidden gems. 

Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent spoke to her for Telegraph Travel: 

Used to seeing Joanna poking around Persepolis, corralling camels and flirting with the Dalai Lama, I’d feared that the series would be a bit, well, prosaic. I mean, Dartmoor’s not quite Dharamshala is it? But instead I found myself joyously bounced along in the passenger seat, hanging on Joanna’s every word, celebrating – along with her – our nation’s diversity, good humour and ingenuity. There might be fewer wafty kaftans and more rain-sodden Gore-Tex, but it’s a jolly good watch nonetheless.

There are gritty stories – such as the collapse of Snowdonia’s slate industry and her meeting with Richard Moore, known as the Derry Lama, a Northern Irish peace campaigner blinded by a rubber bullet during the Troubles – but there are also moments of pure Patsy fabulousness, where we are reminded that Joanna is, above all, an entertainer, her comic timing honed to a tee. The shot of two well-muscled Scotsmen jogging past her, tops off, kilts blowing in a Highland breeze, will have you laughing out loud. “We wanted to have a mix of stories,” she tells me, purring across the airwaves in the nation’s favourite voice, “from the strange long shadows of Windrush to the extraordinary beauty of the Yorkshire Dales. But above all I wanted people to feel proud to live here, proud to be British."

Read the full story.

The United Arab Emirates, Rwanda and Burundi will be added to the Government’s list of countries with travel bans from 1pm today, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announced on Thursday. 

There are now 33 countries on the UK’s travel ‘red list,’ which is being enforced in an effort to stop the spread of new Covid-19 variants from South Africa and Brazil. 

“People who have been in or transited through these countries will be denied entry, except British, Irish and third country nationals with residence rights who must self-isolate for ten days at home,” Mr Shapps announced on Twitter. 

“Passengers must still have proof of a negative test and completed Passenger Locator Form before arrival – or could otherwise face a £500 fine for each,” he added. 

Social media influencers in Dubai, who have received widespread criticism for travelling abroad under Tier 4 or lockdown restrictions, including from Home Secretary Priti Patel, will be among the thousands of Britons rushing back to the UK – however, they will not face 10 days in a quarantine hotel at their own cost as the Department of Health has yet to get the scheme up and running. 

Travel bans and quarantine hotels are part of the tougher travel restrictions announced amid fears of new variants of the virus – Tim Hames, a senior adviser to global consultancy FTI Consulting, warned in an industry conference on Thursday there were likely to be “intense and potentially tighter limits on travel” until May.

We found laughter and a relaxed attitude was a great medicine, writes Janice Hooper.

When I told people that my mother-in-law was accompanying us on a family holiday, the general – well-meaning – assumption was bandied around that we would have had a ‘babysitter on tap’. This couldn’t be further from the truth, because we’re part of what I call the burgeoning ‘Sandwich Generation’.

This tribe is so-named because we are clearly a sandwich short of a picnic. We left it so late to have children that we’re caring for very young kids and aged parents with additional needs, simultaneously. Our holiday would involve my husband and I entertaining looking after our four- and five-year-old sons, as well as caring for his mother, Mary, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2017. Suddenly I found myself packing for the ‘fun’ prospect of a week in Corsica, and I wasn’t entirely sure that ‘holiday’ was the right word for it.

First off, it wasn’t a case of meeting Mary in Corsica – we’d probably never see her again if she attempted this journey alone. Our tribe flew from our home in Aberdeen to collect the beloved ‘Nanny London’ in person. After a day trotting round the Imperial War Museum, finally, we were off to France.

Read the full story.

The last flight from the UAE has landed at Heathrow as the Government's travel ban comes into force.

British Airways flight 104  from Dubai landed at 12.57 – just  three minutes before the 10-day quarantine requirement set in.  Flights from the UAE are now banned until further notice 

The dnata Travel Group responds to the news that the United Arab Emirates has been added to the Government’s list of countries with travel bans.

John Bevan, CEO – dnata Travel Group (owner of Travel Republic, Travelbag and Netflights):  

We’d assumed this was coming and had spent the last couple of days putting contingency plans in place, and have been working closely with our airline partners since the announcement was made to ensure we can repatriate any customers currently in Dubai as quickly as possible. We have already cancelled down any package holidays booked across our brands for departure before the end of March, so fortunately our exposure this time around is minimal. 

Although we support what is a necessary step to preserve public health here, it is nonetheless another sad day for the travel industry in general and we join the calls for the Government to put together a dedicated support package for the thousands of people who depend on a vibrant holiday sector and whose livelihoods have been wiped out by this pandemic.

Hotels are ready. Caterers are ready. Travellers are ready (though perhaps not totally willing). But is the Government ready, asks Hazel Plush.

Whatever your opinion on the idea of quarantine hotels, one thing is indisputable: the silence from ministers is deafening. Yet again, the Government is threatening to close our borders further – but while it’s big on hard talk, it is severely lacking in hard facts.

Where will these ‘directed isolation’ facilities be? From which date will Britons be forced to spend isolation in claustrophobic hotel rooms, rather than the comfort and safety of their own homes? Who will be policing them? How much will it all cost? So many questions remain – and these are hardly minor details.

Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Home Secretary Priti Patel said that such details would be provided "next week" – but surely time is of the essence? Aren’t we owed them right now? 

Find the full story here.

The Transport Secretary's weekly update has morphed from 'travel corridors' to 'entirely banned countries', writes Greg Dickinson.

We’ve developed new rituals over the past year. The good old 8pm NHS clap (now discontinued), the 5pm Downing Street press briefing (now recontinued), the lunchtime aimless wander just for the sake of leaving the house for 20 minutes.

But there has been another ritual. From July to December, at 5pm or thereabouts every Thursday, Grant Shapps ceremoniously logged onto Twitter, rolled up his sleeves and informed the nation which countries had lost, or gained, a ‘travel corridor’: the holiday equivalent of Willy Wonka’s golden ticket.

These Tweets could bring joy, or misery, in fewer than 280 characters. If your destination had gained a travel corridor, it meant you didn’t need to quarantine on your return to the UK. If your destination lost its travel corridor, however, and you were already out there, it could mean an expensive, frantic rush home before the Saturday 4am deadline.

Read the full story.

Oakland airport in California has set up vending machines selling at-home PCR test kits to passengers. 

A little costlier than the can of coke you might usually pick up at a vending machine, the test kit prices range from $130 to $150 (£95 to £110). The contactless machines are set to be rolled out to airports in major US cities, including New York and Boston.

Italy was expected Friday to announce an easing of regional coronavirus restrictions, despite warnings from public health experts that the move may be rash, reports AFP.

Veneto, the region around Venice, was set to be downgraded from an "orange" to a "yellow" zone, which would allow the daytime reopening of bars and restaurants and greater freedom to travel.

A similar change was on the cards for Calabria in the south and Emilia-Romagna in the north, according to La Repubblica daily.

The move would come as other countries in Europe are mulling hardening restrictions.

The World Health Organization's European branch warned on Thursday that it was "too early to ease up" due to a "still very high" presence of the virus.

"Yes, Italy is bucking the trend," said Walter Ricciardi, a public health expert who advises Italy's health minister on the pandemic.

Lord Adonis, a former transport secretary and Labour peer, was paraphrasing Mark Twain's famous quote on the mistaken printing his obituary at the travel sector's Virtual ITT Conference Forum while speaking to trade publication TTG. Lord Adonis added: 

When vaccination is sufficiently widespread, we can open up. I don’t believe travel patterns are going to change dramatically [from before the pandemic].Once the vaccine has been rolled out, behaviour patterns will return, although the transitional pain will be acute.

In seven years, Clipper Victor experienced more than most airliners manage in a lifetime. Much, much more, explains Chris Leadbeater.

The “life” of an aircraft is generally quite a mundane thing. It spends 30 or so years in the sky, flying through the same grooves of airspace, with nothing more worrying than the occasional bout of turbulence or heavy weather to ruffle its mechanical feathers. True, it touches down on runways in exotic places and far-flung locations – assuming it is flying long-haul routes. But its three-decade existence is usually a repetitive slog, peppered with an overhaul or two. The afterlife may bring a last photo-opportunity, if the retiree makes it to the fabled aviation “boneyard” in the Mojave Desert. In most cases, though, the final act is a dismantling for reusable parts, and an unsentimental scrapping of everything else.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. And none more exceptional, perhaps, than the Boeing 747-121 which went under the registration N736PA – but was better known as “Clipper Victor”. No other aircraft has a comparable story. It flew for just a little over seven years, between January 22 1970 and March 27 1977 – with the entirety of its service taking place in the colours of Pan Am. But in those seven years, it experienced more than most airliners manage in “careers” four times as lengthy. Much, much more.

Read the full story.

UK enquiries and bookings have been coming in thick and fast in the last few days, according to holiday rental company Oliver's Travels. It reports that:

• UK stays make up 75 per cent of all bookings for 2021 (on a typical year it would be 15 per cent)
• Bookings for UK homes are up 200 per cent versus the same week in Jan. 2020
• There are now an average of just 1.3 peak weeks available per home in the UK

British traveller Chloe Newnham has shared pictures with the press of her hotel room in Brisbane, Australia.

The Briton, who is undergoing two weeks of self-isolation as part of Australia's strict quarantine policy, said the UK should learn from quarantine systems already in place in other countries.

She has completed 11 of 14 days and is due to be released on Monday.

Just two of the 33 countries on the UK’s travel “red list” have a higher Covid case rate than the UK, The Telegraph’s analysis has shown, while several are seeing more than 10 times fewer infections than Britain, reports Oliver Smith.

Under tough new border rules, citizens of red list countries are banned from visiting the UK, while British residents returning from these destinations will soon be forced to spend 10 days under guard in a quarantine hotel. 

However, the latest data suggests that the chance of an infected traveller coming to the UK from many of these countries – particularly when they are required to take a PCR test before departure – is small. 

The seven-day case rate in the UK currently stands at 294.7 per 100,000 people, while the figure for Rwanda, for example, which was added to the red list yesterday, is just 18.2. 

Read the full story.

Ski resorts across Europe have declared the avalanche risk as ‘extreme’ as heavy snow continues to fall, reports Lucy Aspden.

Yesterday a man was buried under an avalanche in Val d’Isere for “well over an hour” after a slide hit him and his family whilst snowshoeing off closed roads. He wasn’t wearing a transceiver and the survival time for anybody buried in an avalanche significantly decreased after 15 minutes – rescuers, who used signals from his mobile phone to track him, are calling his recovery miraculous.

Today in neighbouring Tignes people are being told to stay off the slopes as the avalanche risk is raised to maximum. Ski lifts in France remain closed.

There has been a string of fatal slides across Europe in recent weeks, including in Switzerland, where avalanches have left eight dead in just a matter of days – including a British and an Irish national.

Avalanche expert Henry Schneiwind, founder of Henry’s Avalanche Talks (HAT), was at the scene in Val d’Isere yesterday, helping to search for the buried man. 

Read Henry’s advice on how to stay safe from avalanches when in ski resorts.

With staycations thrust upon us, it’s just as well that Britain’s hotels have undergone a renaissance and are now a holiday in themselves, writes Mariella Frostrup.

With talk of hotel quarantine and travel restrictions lasting until after Easter, it looks increasingly likely that we are in for another staycation summer. Thank goodness, then, for the UK’s world-class hospitality industry.

Those old enough to remember the dark days of the 1980s and early 1990s, before Bridget Jones had made a “mini-break” desirable and when sexy bathrooms were but a twinkle in the eye for Nick Jones of Soho House, will recall that it wasn’t always so. But things have changed. These days, when gongs are being handed out, I’m surprised that so few go to those who have irrevocably changed our leisure time for the better.

A weekend in December at The Pig at Harlyn Bay was a timely reminder, between lockdowns, of what standard-setters British hotels can be. The latest in this carnivore-celebrating chain can’t take credit for the blue skies and dazzling winter sun we experienced during our stay – but for casually sumptuous accommodation in a spectacular setting, with delectable meals to replace the calories lost stomping the Cornish coastal path, there can’t be a better choice. 

Read the full story.

As of 1pm today, a travel ban comes into force for the UAE and travellers arriving in the UK from the Emirates will face a 10-day quarantine. 

Some have reached British soil ahead of the deadline, including these passengers who flew in from Abu Dhabi.

Princess Cruises 2023 World Cruise itinerary will go on sale February 10, 2021, the line announced.

Sailing roundtrip from North America, the 111- or 97-day journey from both Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles will depart in January 2023 onboard Island Princess.

It will include 50 destinations across 31 countries and six continents: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, South America and North America.

Among the ports of call are 21 Unesco World Heritage Sites, including Petra (Jordan), Mount Etna (Sicily) and Ephesus, Turkey.

Overnight stops in Dubai and Venice will be offered as part of the lines "more ashore" late-night calls. More information is available on princess.com.

Nimsdai ‘Nims’ Purja rewrote the history books when he reached the summit of K2 this month, but his ambition doesn't stop there, writes Lucy Aspden, who spoke him this week.

His lasting memory from the climb? 

Everyone stopping 10 metres away from the summit, brother to brother, shoulder to shoulder – we walked to the summit at the same time. To see every team member stepping at the same time, with a big smile and huge sense of achievement, that was probably the most emotional part of the whole journey.

Read the full story.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Friday that Japan remained determined that the Olympics would go ahead as planned in Tokyo this summer.

Amid speculation the event might be cancelled again due to the coronavirus pandemic, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said on Wednesday the IOC was fully committed to it going ahead.

Suga told a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum that Japan was "determined to deliver hope and courage to the world" through the Games, and he would continue to collaborate closely with Bach to realise a "safe and secure" event.

It “would be better to look at cancellation policies” than for the Government to issue blanket advice to Britons not to book summer holidays, according to easyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren.

The easyJet boss said he wrote to the Government after foreign secretary Dominic Raab insisted “now is not the time to book a summer holiday” last week.

The low-cost airline has just reported losses in excess of £400 million for three months to December

Mr Lundgren said:

More relevant would be [to say] ‘Choose an airline or holiday company that gives you the confidence to make a booking'. We are leading the industry by offering refunds to customers even if their flight operates. No one else is doing this. Customers can book with confidence.

I did send a note when that comment was made, saying it would be better to look at cancellation policies. You can book [with us] with confidence. Even if your flight operates, you will get your money back in cash.

The Chinese government announced it will no longer recognise the British National (Overseas) passport as a valid travel document or form of identification.

The decision was announced days before a new visa route for Hong Kong nationals looking to move to the UK is due to open.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the visa scheme, which was announced in the wake of Beijing's national security law being imposed on Hong Kong last year, honours the "profound ties of history and friendship" between the UK and its former colony.

Under the scheme, Hong Kong residents and their dependents would be offered a route to residency and eventual citizenship in the UK, with an estimated 300,000 Hongkongers expected to take advantage of it.

But the announcement by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian throws new uncertainty around the plan just hours after the UK said it would begin taking applications for BN(O) visas from Sunday.

Searches for summer staycations (June, July, August) on Airbnb have more than doubled compared to this time last year, according to the company. 

This is in line with recent reports that holiday parks and other self-catering accommodation providers in the UK are seeing a surge in interest for Easter and summer with little clear indication as to when international travel restrictions will lift.

• 10 annoying things UK tourism needs to fix before our Great British summer

The real benefits of virtual reality travel won’t be reaped by tech-savvy teens, but by silver surfers, writes Robbie Hodges.

The hottest destination of the next decade? It won’t be far-flung or hyperlocal; it will be hard-coded. If the current trajectory of technological advancement is any indication, then all of us – Mum, Dad, Grandma and the kids – will soon be swapping our sunglasses for hi-tech headsets and holidaying together in “the metaverse”.

A word originally coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 science fiction novel, Snow Crash, the metaverse is no longer the stuff of fantasy. Put simply, the metaverse is an emerging, shared online space in which users, embodied by avatars, can socialise safely with friends and family.

As gateways to this alternative reality opened up last year, hundreds of thousands of people checked in.  The felted folds of the Faroe Islands might have been closed for business, but that didn’t stop 700,000 visitors (five times the number of tourists who went there in 2019) from heading out on virtual rambles between April and June. As part of the archipelago’s  “remote tourism” project, islanders were equipped with high-definition cameras and directed to run, walk and jump by tourists grounded at home via their mobile phones.

Read the full story.

Labour will force a vote on the Government's quarantine hotel plans, as it looks to extend restrictions beyond the "limited" list of 30 hotspot countries. 

The opposition will accuse the Government’s plans of being “too little, too late” and say that “limiting restrictions to just a handful of countries puts at risk the gains being made by the vaccine, by exposing us to potentially resistant Covid-19 strains, undermining the huge sacrifices of the British people.”  

During the next opposition day debate on Monday, Labour will introduce a motion calling for "a comprehensive hotel quarantine system for all arrivals into the UK", as well as calling for the Government to publish the scientific evidence on which it has based its current approach.  

Nick Thomas-Symonds, shadow home secretary, said:  “Labour is calling on the Government to introduce a comprehensive hotel quarantine system for all travellers, in order to shut down the gaping holes in the Government’s plans. The plans have no clear basis in science and fail to recognise that we do not know where the next strains of the virus will emerge from, until it is too late."   

Australian Open tennis players have started to leave hotel quarantine after finishing their 14-day isolation period.

Around 500 players will have been let out of quarantine hotels in Melbourne and Adelaide, according to the championship's organisers.

Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams are among those allowed out on Friday.

In Australia, strict quarantine rules for anyone entering the country.

More than 1,700 players, staff and others tied to the event, which starts on February 8, were flown into Australia on chartered flights in early January.

Cases have plummeted 90% in Austria, and without the sort of draconian rules Britain has adopted, writes Alexander Fiske-Harrison.

If the Government's plan for hotel quarantine, adding more countries to the list in response to new variants concerns, lasts beyond April, "no-one will go on holiday overseas" once the blanket ban on non-essential travel lifts, according to Sandals' UK tour operator.

Karl Thompson, Managing Director of Unique Caribbean Holidays, Sandals and Beaches Resorts’ UK tour operator, said:

A quarantine hotel model [won't] make a huge difference to our business and our customers whilst the country is on lockdown as people can’t travel. If this proposal [...] lasts beyond April, when we are hoping people can travel again, it will be a nail in the coffin for the travel industry. No-one will go on holiday overseas if they must foot the bill for a [ten-day] stay in an airport hotel that they’re not allowed to leave, on top of paying for Covid tests before they depart and, in some cases, isolating in the destination when they arrive, too.

[...] Once the most vulnerable people have been vaccinated which, according to Government claims, will be by the Spring, the country should be in a much better place. The priority must, of course, be on public health but there also needs to be a focus on establishing a blueprint for safe and responsible travel to help rebuild the UK economy and the battered travel industry.

With social media stars under fire for poolside pics in Dubai they say are ‘essential travel’, do they belong in a post-pandemic world, asks Anna Hart.

In a year not short on surprises, Wednesday saw Home Secretary Priti Patel launch a scathing attack on social media influencers, actively “showing off in sunny parts of the world”.

As the Government announced tighter restrictions on international journeys, now illegal for leisure purposes, Patel singled out this privileged and blinkered class of traveller for poor examples of Covid compliancy while the NHS is stretched to breaking point and the UK has just passed the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths.

Of course, the backlash against reality TV stars and social media influencers who have shamelessly exploited the loophole permitting “essential work travel” during lockdowns in order to escape to Dubai or the Maldives had already begun.

With most of their followers stuck indoors during the bleakest of British Januarys, juggling childcare with work commitments and dutifully obeying restrictions that stop them travelling several miles away to see their mum or a close friend, it’s hard to imagine more tone-deaf “social media content” than a bikini selfie in a Dubai hotel’s infinity pool, tagged #todaysoffice. 

Read the full story.

Quarantine must be "replaced entirely" when the public health situation in the UK allows, according to Virgin Atlantic. A spokesperson for the airline told Telegraph Travel: 

Public health and protecting the NHS must come first and we recognise the need for UK Government to act now to reduce the risk of Covid-19 variants entering the UK. However, border control policy must be based on science and data and it is important that a clear set of conditions are agreed upfront to allow for the removal of restrictions altogether.

When  the time is right, we should aim for 72 hour pre-departure testing or proof of vaccination to replace quarantine entirely, creating the conditions for free movement of goods and people. National lockdown and additional border restrictions will continue to materially delay the recovery of a UK aviation sector under severe strain and depending on the length of restrictions, sector specific support will be needed. 

Travel and aviation is vital to the UK’s economic recovery and the emergence of a Global Britain post Brexit. 

The partial travel ban targeting only countries with new covid variants is “pointless,” say SAGE scientists, as they urged ministers to extend it to all arrivals into the UK.

They warned that limiting it to 33 “red list” countries covering South America, southern Africa, UAE and Portugal would be ineffective against other emerging strains and travellers who could still enter the UK by going through a third country.

An additional 26 countries where there is no travel ban and only pre-departure testing and quarantine already have reported evidence of the the Brazilian or South African covid strains having spread to them.

England may also be put out of kilter with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which are considering travel bans that would require all arrivals to quarantine in state-approved hotels. 

Read the full story.

A leading professor of outbreak medicine said there is “scope” for a Covid vaccination to be linked to people’s passports.

Speaking at the Institute for Travel and Tourism (ITT)’s virtual forum, Professor Calum Semple, of the University of Liverpool, said such a plan – which has been supported by former Prime Minister Tony Blair – was a “possibility”.

Professor Semple said it was being considered by “a number of experts and government advisors”.

He added: “I think this is acceptable. We do have the technology and we do have the testing ability.”

He said said that in six months to a year: “it will be possible to have had a test that says ‘you’ve had a vaccine, you’re a good responder, you’re likely to be immune for the next year, two years or six months, and have that information on a dynamic app.”

Dubai continued to see parties over Christmas and welcomed holidaymakers who were seeking to escape restrictions in their own countries, but seems to be paying the price to this festive period. 

Virus cases have quadrupled since November to almost 4,000 a day. The past fortnight of record-breaking infections has forced the Emirate to introduce some new restrictions, including increasing testing on arrivals and banning live entertainment, even as the United Arab Emirates’ vaccination drive speeds ahead.

It’s bad luck to be the jet-set’s party town during a global pandemic,” said Jim Krane, research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute and author of Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City, told the Financial Times.

Hotel occupancy rose to an average 71 per cent in December, the busiest month for hospitality since the pandemic began, the newspaper reports.

Tourism suffered its worst year on record in 2020, but 2021 could prove even worse, according to the UN World Tourism Organisation's (UNWTO) latest research.

UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said: "While much has been made in making safe international travel a possibility, we are aware that the crisis is far from over."

The global tourism body said there were one billion fewer international arrivals in 2020, down 74 per cent, with a loss in export revenues of USD$1.3 trillion, 11 times worse than during the 2009 global financial crisis.

Up to 120 million jobs could be lost due to the pandemic, it warned.

• Europe recorded a 70 per cent decline in arrivals in 2020
• Asia Pacific's arrivals were down 84 per cent
• Middle East and Africa: 75 per cent
• The Americas: 69 per cent

The UNWTO said that nearly a third of respondents on its Panel of Experts survey feared conditions will hit new lows this year before improving in 2022. A quarter expect a similar performance while 45 per cent believe 2021 will be better than 2020.

Australia may resume its travel bubble with New Zealand in coming days, its health minister said on Friday, as the state of Victoria eased border controls ahead of hosting the first tennis Grand Slam on 2021, the Australian Open.

Health officials are reassessing daily a pause on Australia's travel corridor with New Zealand after the Pacific nation's strong response to an outbreak of a contagious strain, while borders between Australia's two most populous states may next week open freely for the first time this year.

The trans-Tasman bubble, which has allowed New Zealand residents to travel to Australia without quarantining, was frozen after New Zealand confirmed its first case in months on Monday of a variant that emerged in South Africa.

Here's a recap: 

• Quarantine hotels will be a 'death knell' for travel
• Ski holidays cancelled until April
• CAA clears Boeing 737 MAX for takeoff
• Dubai is luring remote workers with free vaccines
• Icelanders get Covid vaccine 'passports'
• Germany to ban travellers from Britain and Portugal
• World's first 'airport for flying cars' to be built in Coventry
• Surge in autumn bookings amidst doubts over summer holidays

Now onto today's news.