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11th Jan 2021

Irish travel expert reveals when we might be able to travel again

Brian Dillon

The travel expert said that we had 12 weeks to “save 2021”.

An Irish travel expert has given the date by which he hopes we might be able to travel again, with current restrictions advising against all non-essential travel outside of Ireland.

Eoghan Corry from Travel Extra has revealed that we should know by Easter if we can travel abroad in summer 2021.

He said, “The most important thing will be the consumer confidence. It won’t be airlines or Government policies that decide when people will travel again, it will be the consumer.

“For that to happen again we will need a good run of luck in terms of the vaccine rollout, that people buy into it, are comfortable with it and know its working, not just in Ireland but wherever we’re going.

“What we’ve seen is confidence built up over the summer while rates are low, and then fell apart, particularly in the last couple of weeks. So we need things to happen, probably by St Patrick’s Day, but certainly by Easter.

“There isn’t a big window of time before things can start moving again. If by July and August things start coming together it’s going to be too late for people to get their act together because hotels are closed, planes are in the wrong place, recertifying an aircraft to get it back in the sky takes ages.

“Ireland will do a bit better than that because Ryanair is keeping their aircrafts certified and their pilots certified, so they’re in a position to move quickly, but most European countries aren’t.

“Even if the return of confidence gets delayed past Easter, and it goes into June and July, that means the big places we like to go, in our case Spain and Portugal, won’t be able to get their product together on the ground to be able to cope with crowds.”

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