Travellers still supportive of pre-departure testing

Pre-departure testing was a feature of travel for much of 2021, and was a cornerstone of the Global Travel Taskforce’s plan to restart international leisure travel last May. It was finally removed on 4 October, only to be reinstated on 7 December owing to the spread of Omicron.

It has since been axed again, effective from Friday (7 January), a decision agents have credited for unlocking vast amounts of pent-up demand for travel. This translated into a busy weekend for the trade, with homeworking giant Travel Counsellors branding Saturday (8 January) "sunshine Saturday".

However, new data from the ONS, published on Tuesday (11 January), reveals that even in November 2021 – a full month after pre-departure testing was scrapped for the first time – there was still significant levels of support for the measure.

In November 2021, 83% of UK residents – rising to 90% of overseas residents – travelling to the UK said they thought Covid-19 testing prior to arrival was "quite important" or very "important".

However, while the proportion of UK resident arrivals who thought pre-departure testing was "very important" fell during the course of 2021 from 73% in February to 45% in August, it was on the up again in the months leading up to the emergence of Omicron, reaching 51% in November.

There was a similar decline among overseas resident arrivals last year, although the proportion who thought pre-departure testing was "very important" never fell below 50%, and recovered to 56% in November suggesting the measure was more important to overseas residents travelling to the UK.