U.K. Tourism Industry Crashing Due to Boris’s Mishandling of Brexit and the Pandemic, says CNN
According to a report for CNN, Britain’s tourism industry is in deep trouble due to a combination of Brexit and Boris Johnson’s cavalier attitude to suppressing Covid infections. No mask mandates, no tourists, says CNN.
It’s a country that has just endured national fuel shortages, isolated food shortages, and its government voted this fall to dump untreated sewage onto its famous coastlines. Oh – and it has the second highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world.
So who would want to go on vacation in the U.K. at the moment?
Not many, the figures show.
For 2021, national tourist board Visit Britain has forecast that visitor numbers will be lower even than in 2020, when travel restrictions were at their highest.
Visitor numbers to the U.K. plummeted from 40.9 million in 2019 to 11.1 million in 2020 – a dip of 73%.
But 2021 seems to have gone even worse for the U.K.’s inbound tourism sector, with just 7.4 million visitors predicted to visit before the year is out – down 82% on 2019.
And although all destinations, of course, have been devastated by the pandemic, the U.K.’s figures show that travellers aren’t bouncing back as they are in nearby countries, which have seen visitor numbers swell as they loosened restrictions.
Neighbour France, for instance, saw a 34.9% growth of tourists in 2021 from 2020, bringing in an extra $43 billion to the economy; while flights to summer hotspots Spain and Turkey have recovered to 64% and 74% of their 2019 figures, even for flights this winter.
Greece was almost back to pre-pandemic levels over the summer, with 86% of the arrivals of July and August 2019, according to aviation data analysts Forward Keys. The UK, in turn, managed just 14.3% of 2019 levels, according to its data.
Industry insiders describe the UK’s situation as a perfect storm: rocketing Covid rates while European neighbours were stabilising; inconsistent travel rules; and the effects of Brexit, which are finally being felt, both within the UK and by those wishing to travel there.
Add in relatively low government spending on a tourism recovery plan, as other countries go all out to court visitors, and you’re left with plummeting numbers.
“The problems facing the UK are multiple, and not just to do with Covid,” says Tom Jenkins, CEO of the ETOA – the trade association for inbound tourism to Europe.
Kurt Janson, director of the U.K.’s Tourism Alliance, knows who he thinks is to blame. “Some of the problems are government-inflicted as well as Covid-inflicted,” he says.
So what exactly is going on in Blighty?
You can read the rest of this piece here.
Curiously, CNN doesn’t consider the most obvious reason tourism to Britain has failed to recover this year – our absurdly complicated rules for incoming travellers, which, in addition to being borderline incomprehensible, changed from week to week over the summer.
Another shortcoming of CNN’s analysis: if the absence of Covid restrictions in England since July 19th is the main reason tourism to the U.K. has fallen, why has it also fallen in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, given that numerous restrictions are still in place in those countries?
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CNN proving there worthiness as a news source as always. Jesus!
It’s a pity CNN appear to be incapable of research or analysis. This is just shallow drivel, complete with Aunt Sallys. I do agree that almost all woes have Johnson as a factor, but that applies to everything he’s had to do with.
Given how bad things are under Biden’s regime, they are rather hypocritical, given their silence on the matter. As bad as things are here, it’s far worse in the US, and that’s taking into account how much better run Red (GOP) states are, e.g. Florida.
“It’s a pity CNN appear to be incapable of research or analysis.”
I don’t think the lack of research or analysis is the issue here. They are a political organisation, like most/all large media organisations (TV, newspapers, social media, communication platforms) – they have an agenda and use their megaphone to promote it. The UK is slightly out of step with rest of Europe in the implementation of medical fascism, so we need to be bullied back to full compliance.
I think that you are probably right about Fourth Reich pressure. The plan is obviously to do the synchronized goose-step.
Hardly anyone in the US watches CNN any more. Its dead. Its firing its talking heads, its business model is fried. Paradoxically it was only Trump that kept its viewer numbers up.
The NYT publishes anti-British articles on a regular basis, this is nothing new. No-one in the UK should take any notice, hardly anyone in the US reads them either.
Yes, foreigners are desperate to come here and sit outside, six feet apart from anyone else while wearing four masks and an intravenous vax drip, and until we make them feel safe like that they’ll be staying away.
CNN. FFS.
Odd how they conveniently forget about Sweden, or, in their own back yard, Florida vs New York State. I suppose we should be glad they didn’t just refer to the Uk as just ‘England’, even though much of the policies they want are already in place for some time in Labour-controlled Wales and SNP-controlled Scotland. Funny how masking up and vaccine passports don’t appear to be making any positive difference to the infection or death rates there.
No foreign tourists in my part of Wales this year, though they could have revelled in muzzleoidism to their hearts’ content. Did somebody give them the ludicrous idea that Gulag Wales was a free country?
In Scotland we wear the nictators compliance mask and have had a higher death rate than England. At one stage Last month 3 times as many people were dying in Scotland on a pro rata basis compared with England!
The difference has narrowed considerably but still more people are dying with a mask mandate in Scotland compared with England, maybe the masks actually make it worse!
Good sarc..
Like we are still with other countries. Not many people been to the US recently from around here.
CNN, that bastion of truth-telling. They are, IMHO, as bad as The Guardian, the BBC, CH4 News and (now) Sky News in their blatant leftist reporting. Even then, they still have not idea that the UK is made up of 4 nations with (in the case of COVID) 4 different governments and policies.
Note that its CNN (amongst many other US outlets) that, in my view (and, it appears, lawyers, given they settled) who smeared the Covington kids, Justice Kavanaugh and now Kyle Rittenhouse. They have a LONG history of terrible activist journalism.
“leftist reporting”
Oh dear – you can’t escape the shit-for-brains brigade even here. There’s always some prat polishing their sublime ignorance of the political world for display.
That is a very shiny comment.
CNN is hard leftist, lockdown is communist, restrictions are leftist and you make no attempt to say why he is wrong.
Except all of the restrictions have had are from a right-wing political party?
Wrong, communism is not right-wing.
Imposing the same policies as a Communist dictatorship that has concentration camps is not right-wing, it cannot be right-wing, by definition.
It would be slightly more accurate to call it SJW bureaucratic big nanny state biased reporting, although that is what many people understand to be left wing anyway.
Rittenhouse was killing white people, for some reason!
FO
That reason being that they were trying to kill him.
Mask mandates in other countries is just one of the reasons I’m not going anywhere in the forseeable future.
Me too.
Esp. as they appear to make diddly squat difference. The data is in from all countries – you have to look very hard to find any country where there was a difference to the infection curve when masks were mandated. It carried on rising on it’s merry way. An engineer would say that if you introduce a change into a dynamic system and nothing happened (blip, up, down – anything) then that change had zero effect. Which is what happened when masks were introduced.
Plus of course the physical fact that as far as the virus is concerned, most masks don’t even exist for it – it’s way smaller than the holes between the fibres.
Scotland and Wales have mask mandates unlike England. Both Scotland and Wales have suffered far more deaths pro rata than England since late August!
At times Scotland had 3 times the death rate of England.
so there is clear evidence that masks make the situation worse!
Just read that Germany and somewhere else in Europe are seeing cases soar with mask mandates AND vaccine passports. How much more evidence has there to be we’re simply making it worse.
I agree…Also I don’t believe for one minute the 60+ and 70+ % numbers they’re touting for Spain and Greece. I know lots of people who travel frequently and even they can’t be arsed. Some friends who did go to Crete in September (as they have for several years) said it was exceptionally quiet and that the Greek people they talked to were ‘desperate’ for travellers to return.
For many the Covizealot nonsense on top of the security Kabuki has combimed to make air travel so thoroughly unpleasant that the prospect of a rainy week in Kendal or wherever is preferable.
The jobsworths, high vis morons, security karens and the risk of being harassed by state goons at each end of the flight, change the risk reward ratio too much.
Is it really worth giving repeated air-time to nonsense like this?
“rocketing Covid rates”
Really that says it all. Booker Prize crap.
I haven’t seen any issues with empty shelves in supermarkets this year at all.
They want everyone to think the fuel shortage was ’caused by brexit’ when in fact it was caused by a remainer leaking news of tanker driver shortages with the intention of causing panic buying to then blame it on brexit!
The UK ‘fuel shortage’ was fabricated by our current government with the timely introduction of E10.
Forecourts were emptying tanks to accommodate the new fuel, and therefore only holding 40-50% of capacity.
The ‘tanker driver shortage’ was the fuse to spark panic buying.
What planet does the journalist live on saying “rocketing Covid rates while European neighbours were stabilising“. The opposite is true.
It’s like one of these ages ago pre written obituaries….Epstein comes to mind.
Given that the UK sends out more tourists than it receives, looking people into the country and making travelling generally unpleasant is doing the UK tourist industry a world of good, as shown by the exorbitant prices of holiday homes.
Whether it’s doing the British public any good is a completely different matter.
We will get the unvaxxed MIL and SIL over for Xmas and New Years and spend heavily in shops, restaurants and hotels, BECAUSE of no masks, tests and QR shite here.
Plus, the Brits are far more polite than the Continentals. Even the zealots, unless they are sitting in front of their keyboards.
Here’s a message to everyone who’d consider traveling to England as tourist if it only wasn’t legal to show ones face in public here: Stay the fuck at home.
CNN, the Yank BBC.
CNN is fakenews
Nothing to do with the outrageous prices, zero customer service, lousy weather and shit food and hotels then?
More to do with it being far too much chew to get away between countries now. I’d have liked for balance some details on the increase in domestic tourism in place of foreign visitors.
Article cited the absence of mask mandates as if that were a bad thing. Personally, the only place I want to see people wearing masks is if I visit Venice to watch a little ‘Commedia Dell’arte’.
The ‘beak’ of the mask of Il Medico della Peste – the plague Doctor- was originally stuffed with aromatic herbs in the belief that plague was transmitted by ‘bad air’. It was, of course, caused by bacteria. Hence they offered no protection against plague. But the masks still exist as a piece of theatre.
400 years later, the science of mask wearing is no stronger but it’s the theatre that’s important.
And I expect another reason our tourist industry is “in trouble” is because of Saint Boris’s destruction of the hospitality industry, with his repeated lockdowns.
Correct
Restrictions restrict tourism.
CNN are brainless
CNN is CIA sending a message..
Thought that was the plan, to ground the plebs and give the planet to the rich
Yes, we have definitely shot ourselves in the foot with our red, green, and pink spotted lists. Another factor is Mayor Khan who instead of informing the world that London is open for business appears to spend most of his time obsessing about an environmental armaggedon, new ‘Green’ taxes and the importance of forcing people to wear a muzzle on a Covid free tube system. What exactly has he done to promote economic recovery? At least Boris and even Ken were in their different ways Ambassadors for the capital.
Fear Not.
This is the same CNN whose rating have crashed, unable to attract 1 million viewers to any show over the last few months.
Go woke, go broke.
Bought to you by CNN sponsored by Pfizer
One thing I hope people will take away from the last two years is that media no longer reports, it’s there for propaganda.
UK not doing what the US Government wants to do? Attack its whole approach.
I live in Wales and we have booked a few holidays in England to avoid the pathetic mandates being imposed here by Drip Drakeford.
So, we have chosen England because they don’t have mandates, CNN.
Does the CNN reporter not recall that New York – Heathrow flights only resumed in August and to Gatwick in September, the US stopped leisure flights last year, so not much time for US travellers to plan ahead, also Americans have much less paid holiday than Britons do, so holiday time Overseas is best used carefully.
There is an ivermectin panic on the big tech and MSM right now. Massive articles from MSM on Ivermectin trying to push a danger narrative and also negative press on Americans Frontline Dr’s, again, to keep the Covid narrative alive. Just go to the Goog and type ivermectin then look at all the panic news articles. We are over the target. Big-Pharma is panicking. This medicine has been widely used by humans without any problems for 40 years. It’s inventor won a Nobel Prize after 20 years of successful use and after 100 million people were cured of a broad spectrum of problems without any side effects. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com