Holidays abroad are back on but would you book one?

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2021

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Holidays abroad are back on… or are they? The much-heralded green list proved to be something of a damp squib, with the only popular British holiday destination on there being Portugal.

There was no place for Greece, France, Spain, Italy, the US, or other regular stars in the list of Britons’ favourite travel spots.

Some rushed to book trips to Portugal, but travel giant Tui reported this week that holidaymakers are cancelling and delaying bookings and rival On The Beach scrapped all its summer holiday departures before the end of August.

Concerns over Covid variants and worries about countries being rapidly pulled from the green list for travel are likely to prevent many from booking, but there is still a big desire from many vaccinated Britons to enjoy one their beloved trips abroad.

So, will there be a surge of bookings, a last minute wait and see game, or a race to grab the few remaining staycation places during the summer holidays?

On this week’s podcast, Georgie Frost, Simon Lambert and Grace Gausden look at the state of play for the travel industry and holidaymakers – and how to protect your hard-earned cash if you do book.

Highlighting the need to do just that, Grace explains why Teletext Holidays is under fire for still not refunding some customers for last year’s cancelled trips.

Also on this week’s show, Simon runs through his anecdotal inflation theory and why trying to buy bikes or garden furniture, find a builder, or fill up a car tells a very different story to the official 1 per cent inflation rate. He also explains why worries over higher inflation are causing markets to throw a wobbly.

And finally, we all know about how the Bank of Mum and Dad has to fund many of their children when it comes to buying a home, but what if you need to help your parents buy a property? A reader asked if there is a potential tax trap – the team explain the answer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money Podcast. I'm Georgie Frost. Stand alongside me and editor Simon Lambert. Today is
0:04.7	consumer expert Grace Gawston. And coming up, the government introduces its traffic light system.
0:09.8	Tui hires bigger planes. Holidays are back on or not this week. A UK holiday firm stopped offering
0:16.8	trips abroad for the summer, saying they've no interest in selling holidays that are unlikely to happen. It comes as teletext holidays are threatened with legal action, as some
0:25.0	customers are still waiting for refunds from a year ago. Closer to home, though, an anecdotal
0:30.3	inflation hits that an official burst looms, but will central banks move too slowly on rates and
0:36.1	trigger a bigger spike?
0:40.4	That's got Simon thinking, woes for learner drivers,
0:43.8	and one child who wants to help their folks in retirement,
0:45.9	but wants to avoid a tax hit.
0:48.7	Don't forget, you can stay up to date with all the latest breaking money news just to go to this ismoney.com.uk or download the app.
0:52.0	But first, the government's traffic light system.
0:54.1	A genius way to keep
0:55.3	Britain safe from new waves, or is this air corridor's fiasco of last summer mark two, where someone
1:02.3	got stuck in Spain for six weeks. It is a hard life. One UK holiday firm isn't convinced
1:07.9	they've stopped selling trips aboard for the summer on the beach's cheap exec. Simon Cooper says the system provides no clarity beyond a three-week window about which
1:16.0	destinations people can actually travel to without isolating. Tui, on the other hand, they're hiring
1:22.2	bigger planes. Grace, are we all off on a summer holiday or is this just another trip to the backyard this summer?
1:30.7	Well, I think there was big hopes for this green list. There were rumours. The Greek islands were
1:35.4	going to be on it. Malta was very highly rumoured to be one of this summer's popular destinations.
1:40.8	And instead, what we got was really Portugal and that was about it there are a handful of
1:46.0	other countries on there like Iceland Singapore Brunei but going for a more long distance trip I think
	...

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