It’s good news France has lifted its Covid travel ban – but the industry is still under a cloud

With presidential elections imminent in France, Emmanuel Macron is no doubt looking at every decision through the prism of political popularity. The travel ban that lifts on Friday perhaps had its roots as a robust response to Boris Johnson’s absurd quarantine decision last summer.

The prime minister and health secretary created a special category known as “amber plus” to mandate self-isolation for anyone coming in from mainland France, with no data to support the exclusion. The riposte no doubt landed well with some voters in France.

Conversely, while the futility of the ban on UK visitors was clear two weeks ago, it would not have been a shrewd political move for the president to open the frontiers while imposing tighter restrictions domestically. Even though the UK supplies one in seven travellers to France (and a much higher proportion of winter visitors to the Alps), the political gain presumably outweighed the economic pain.

Travel finds itself the most prominent pawn in the political games that accompany the Covid-19 pandemic. “Blanket travel bans will not prevent the international spread, and they place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods,” says the World Health Organization. But goodness, they are popular with voters.

That became clear in the UK early in the pandemic. Britain had, unusually, abandoned all travel restrictions in mid-March 2020. But by May, just as the rest of Europe was easing restrictions, the UK demolished the hopes of holidaymakers and the travel industry for a swift recovery by announcing two weeks of quarantine for everyone coming into the UK.

The timing of what was effectively a travel ban was not directly related to what we now know to be party season in Downing Street. But many people in the travel industry believe it was a consequence of Dominic Cummings’s trip to Barnard Castle. With support for the government crumbling, the polls showed a large majority in favour of travel bans. So the government banked an easy win by ruling out holidays for over a month in June and July.

The French announcement was greeted by the usual jostle of announcements from travel firms boasting of bookings increasing two, three or four-fold. But we are simply back where we were in mid-December, only with even less confidence about trips going ahead than ever. I’m in no mood to party – or enjoy an alcohol-fuelled “work event” with my ever-congenial colleagues.