Hello, it's Saturday the 4th of September and thanks for joining me, Simon Calder, for the latest on travel and destinations from the Green List and the travel desk of the Independent.

Today, inbound tourism to the UK is being destroyed. Should you care? What's happening with queues at airports, particularly Heathrow? And British Airways

explains its plans for Gatwick Airport, not what you might have thought. Of course, this podcast

is completely free, as is my weekly travel email. Do sign up at independent.co.uk

forward slash newsletters.

The UK used to attract 41 million people every year from abroad spending 28 billion pounds.

A remarkable achievement, partly made possible by the fact that the UK, and in particular

London, is the world capital of aviation. Sorry, of course, that is, was the world capital of aviation.

Currently, he throw his ninth in Europe, I think, is just overtaken Athens, but still behind Antalya in Turkey

and Palma de Mallorca in Spain. So with that great advantage, it was a real serious money earner

for the UK. And even if you think, well, there's a pandemic on, we really

don't need tourists, everyone's staying at home. For a start, people staying in the UK do not make

up for other people who would have come in from abroad. Because typically British people don't go

and stay in five-star hotels in because typically British people don't go and stay in

five-star hotels in central London. They don't spend a fortune going around the attractions,

very good ones in Stratford-on-Avon. So it's not directly substitutable. Furthermore, there's an

impact in the West End. One reason the West End is full of absolutely

top rate theatres is because lots of Americans go to the UK. With the UK saying effectively

don't come in, yeah, we'll now accept your jabs, but we're going to make it so difficult

in terms of testing that you're really not going to want to come in,

then that is not happening. And of course, the very valuable Asian and UAE Gulf people who would be coming to the UK aren't coming in because the government says, we don't

recognize your vaccines. So it will have a huge effect economically on the UK, but it will also affect a lot of tourist

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