July 25th - Calls grow for Rhodes to be put on 'No Go' list
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Calls are growing for the fire-hit Greek island of Rhodes to be placed on the Foreign Office "no go" list. That would compel travel firms to cancel all holidays for an indeterminate length of time – allowing families having second thoughts about going to a destination hit by such a calamity to get a full refund. But it's not as simple as that...
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Cornwall. |
| 0:07.0 | It's Tuesday the 25th of July and if you want a holiday, well Tui will sell you one for a week today. |
| 0:15.0 | Flying from Gatwick, very good price actually, 545 pounds per person based on a family of four and staying in a |
| 0:26.5 | what's called a small and friendly apartment in a lovely Greek island. You won't be surprised to learn |
| 0:34.0 | that that island is Rhodes, which is why I have picked it, and the resort of |
| 0:38.9 | Pefkos, which is quite close to the affected areas. And I am raising this because there is a growing |
| 0:47.5 | clamour for travel companies to stop sending people to roads. The big two, obviously Jet 2 and |
| 0:57.1 | Tui have stopped outbound flights for this week and to give people a chance to cancel their flights. |
| 1:07.2 | And yesterday the Liberal Democrats actually made it a political issue. The foreign affairs |
| 1:14.4 | spokesperson for the Lib Dems, that's Leila Moran, said she wanted uncertainty for holiday |
| 1:22.3 | makers out of pocket as insurance companies refused to pay up to end. There's a slightly odd, |
| 1:31.3 | kind of lack perhaps of understanding about how this works. She is saying that she thinks that |
| 1:39.1 | it should be put on the red list. You might remember the red list. We talked about it a lot in |
| 1:43.6 | COVID. There isn't |
| 1:44.7 | actually a red list, but let's assume that she means places to which the government says you |
| 1:48.7 | shouldn't go. And she's saying that because this is stopping the travel insurance companies |
| 1:53.1 | paying out. No, it's stopping the holiday companies from being forced to cancel all holidays for an indeterminate length |
| 2:03.2 | of time and to bring back people who are there. So should the government be doing this, first of all, |
| 2:10.6 | from what I can see, I don't think so. 90% of the island is, appears to safe and functioning I as I have mentioned wouldn't go |
| 2:20.8 | there because of the concerns about adding to the stress on the infrastructure but I might |
| 2:28.0 | well if I had no other plans I might well take up to me with that very good value offer. |
| 2:36.2 | A very excellent price for this time of year and I would do it knowing that the law says |
... |
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