Seven out of 10 (69%) travel companies with staff on furlough plan to make redundancies once the scheme ends this month, according to a new survey.
The poll of 107 businesses by travel trade association Abta suggests that the scrapping of the Job Retention Scheme on September 30 will bring the total number of jobs lost in the outbound travel sector during the coronavirus pandemic to nearly 100,000.
Latest Government figures show travel agencies and tour operators had the second highest rate of furloughed staff of any industry at 46%, behind aviation (51%).
Abta’s survey also suggested that new summer holiday bookings were down 83% this year compared with 2019.
Nearly half of travel companies also reported seeing no year-on-year increase in bookings despite the rollout of the vaccine programme.
Abta called on the Government to end the widespread use of PCR testing as part of an overhaul of the…