By Samuel Indyk
Investing.com – UK travel stocks were trading higher on Thursday on hopes that fully vaccinated passengers would be able to bypass Covid-19 quarantine requirements on their return to England from 'amber' list countries.
The Times reported that government ministers are aiming to introduce quarantine free travel for fully vaccinated travellers by 26th July, the first full week of the school holidays.
The news comes ahead of a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson later this week.
Merkel has been vocal in her position to dissuade UK passengers from travelling to the EU and has called on the rest of the bloc to reach a common position on British travellers. However, Spain was said to be against plans to ban those arriving from Britain, despite the spread of the Delta variant.
Under current plans, anyone travelling from the UK to Germany must quarantine for two weeks, even if they are fully vaccinated. Other European countries, including Italy and France, have similar quarantine rules in place.
Vaccinations
The optimism for international travel comes amid signs that the vaccinations are working. It appears the link between rising cases and hospitalisations and death has been weakened.
“We're definitely seeing increasing infection rates, but what we're seeing is a much lower level of hospitalisation,” said Peter Horby, chair of the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group on Sunday.
“So that link is really, really much weaker which is really fantastic but it's not completely broken.”
The news that international travel could resume for the summer has lifted shares in airlines such as IAG (LON:ICAG), Ryanair (LON:RYA), Wizz Air (LON:WIZZ) and EasyJet (LON:EZJ).
However, there must be a note of caution, and if Merkel’s meeting with Johnson fails to provide hope that European restrictions will be lifted, then the prospect of UK travel to Europe this summer will diminish.