Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Thursday the 16th of April,

which means it's almost seven weeks since the US and Israel began their attack on Iran.

Added to Israel's assault on Lebanon, this is a tragedy in the Middle East that has cost

thousands of lives. It's also destabilized global commerce and caused all manner of consequences

in the realm of travel, not least closing, or at least putting many obstacles on,

the aviation superhighway which used to lead from the UK via the Gulf to Asia, Africa and

Australasia. Given the scale of the disruption and the uncertainty that it brings to travellers,

I was interested to talk to a leading figure on the front line of the UK travel industry.

He is Richard Slater, founder and managing director of Henbury Travel,

a leading independent retail travel agency based in

Macclesfield in Lovely Cheshire. Richard is also a director of Abtter, the Travel Association.

My first question to him, have booking stopped over the past seven weeks?

No, they haven't stopped fully, and certainly it's been challenging and booking

some reduced. I guess it's like a confidence. People booking holiday's likes to have confidence

in the fact that they're going, or at least the arrangements they're going to make through and

how happened. Well, and the fact that the Foreign Office is warning against all but essential travel to Qatar,

which is, of course, the location for Doha Airport and the UAE, which is Abu Dhabi and Dubai,

international, the busiest airport globally in the world.

The Foreign Office says it's even too dangerous to change planes,

yet, as you will know, thousands of people are flying from Manchester,

Heathrow, other UK airports, too, particularly Dubai at the moment.

But you can't, I guess, as a responsible travel agent, sell people trips which are going against

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