Coronavirus: England allows travel to Portugal

After a period of many uncertainties, the British government finally took Portugal off the red list and, from 20 August, authorised the opening of travel corridors between the two countries. With this, England allows travel to Portugal without requiring quarantine.

The news was received as a boost for the tourist sector, as the British are regular visitors of Portugal, especially during the summer. The Algarve region has already felt the difference with this opening, and this week Ryanair announced 14 more flights per week between the Algarve and the UK, which directly reflects the growth in demand.

“As soon as Portugal was added to the UK’s list of ‘safe countries’, we could feel an immediate effect on our bookings. Before this announcement, we had on average 4 bookings per day from the UK for the months of July and August, now this figure has quadrupled and we have 16 bookings per day. This represents a significant number and has a direct impact on our revenue and property occupancy strategy”, Arthur Lepoutre, Head of Revenue Management at LovelyStay.

For just one week, LovelyStay, a leading short-term rental management company with over 300 properties throughout the country, recorded over 100 bookings from the UK alone. This only reaffirms the idea that, as England allows travel to Portugal, the British decided to cross Europe to enjoy the Portuguese summer.

The measure to open up the air corridors was decided by the British authorities, who justified it with the figures presented by Portugal in the control of the pandemic on its territory. As we have said before, the Portuguese country was considered one of the safest post-coronavirus destinations. Have you missed the article? Take a look here!

Portugal therefore joins a small group of countries that have been added to the list of “travel corridors” with the United Kingdom since mid-July, which include Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, the St Vincent and the Grenadines archipelago, Brunei and Malaysia.