UK travelers have already begun planning their late-summer holidays in Dubai while entertaining the hope that the UAE will soon be placed on the British green list.
The latest travel data highlighted flight bookings from the UK to Dubai getting more than doubled for the last week of August, according to travel analyst ForwardKeys.
The UK has a green, amber and red set of categories that govern trips abroad and the need to quarantine on return as part of its pandemic response.
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The UAE’s red list status had become a deterrent to travel because Britons returning from Dubai had to quarantine themselves for 10 days in a hotel at an average cost of £1,750 (Dh9,120), according to ForwardKeys. They have noted a significant increase in bookings in the final week—while analyzing reservation data between the UK and Dubai for the summer months.
The present data highlighted the confidence in the market about the UAE not continuing to be a red list destination throughout the period, since bookings for the last week of August are currently at 48.7 percent of 2019 levels, the travel sources said while pointing to various factors behind the increase in the number of bookings.
With the summer holidays ending in the UK, a bank holiday weekend, and the summer getting slightly less hot, the travel market expects the UAE to be off the red list at that point in summer,” the sources stated.
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Meanwhile, the Flight Centre UK reported its strongest day for booking enquiries in the year last week, where weekly averages were up 45 percent compared to March and April.
Enquiries for the UAE witnessed a good amount of increase in the past month, according to Yvonne Hobden, head of product and retail marketing at Flight Centre UK.
Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths had said in April that talks were afoot to put the UAE back on the UK’s green list and a strong representation had been made to the British government about the credibility of numbers here, besides the way things were being handled also.
Mansoor Abulhoul, UAE Ambassador to the UK, had expressed hopes that the UAE’s status would be reconsidered at the earliest.
