I
t wasn’t so long ago that taking a holiday in the Med involved paying a cowboy for a PCR test, filling in forms, downloading an app, social distancing on the beach, attempting to learn local restaurant rules — is it five at a table on Fridays? — having our temperature taken at museums and praying that Grant Shapps didn’t put our destination on the red list before we boarded the flight home for mandatory quarantine.
And yet we still managed to get away. So it would be disappointing if we allowed record-breaking heatwaves and the threat of industrial action to put us off in 2023. Not that we are: tour operators including Jet2, On The Beach, Premier Travel and Scott Dunn report that neither health-threatening heat nor the prospect of strikes are depressing demand for last-minute breaks.
“High temperatures are not uncommon at this time of the year and the fact that this weekend will be the biggest in our history proves that people are jumping at the chance to enjoy their holidays,” said Jet2’s James Pieslak. Destinations such as the Balearics, the Canaries, mainland Spain, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and Malta are all proving incredibly popular, he says. This weekend Jet2 is running its biggest ever programme, with 110 aircraft operating more than 800 flights.