The Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) has cancelled all its Black Friday travel deals as countries move to ban South African visitors following the discovery of a highly mutated Covid-19 variant.
Travel-starved South Africans were looking forward to scooping discounted packaged holidays on Black Friday. But news of a recently discovered, highly mutated Covid-19 variant, B1.1.529, has dampened the mood.
The United Kingdom, Germany, Israel, Singapore, and other countries have imposed bans on South African travellers. This follows a briefing by South Africa’s Department of Health and scientists from the Network for Genomic Surveillance on Thursday, where it was revealed that a “variant of great concern” – B.1.1.529 – had been detected in Gauteng, Botswana, and Hong Kong.
By midday Friday, several countries announced that they would be tightening their borders in an attempt to avoid importing cases of the new variant. These travel bans, ahead of South Africa’s summer season, come at the worst possible time for the country’s already embattled tourism sector.
And FCTG, which recently told Business Insider South Africa of its Black Friday plans, has decided to pull its discounts and focus, instead, on travellers in distress.
“Our number one priority is to assist our customers at this time,” said Andrew Stark, Flight Centre Travel Group MD.
“To wake up to this news and be in this position again is simply devastating. We envisage there will be a domino effect with other countries following suit as we have seen before. We cannot emphasise enough how important it is for our country to achieve an 80% plus vaccination rate so that we can proactively put an end to these situations unfolding.”
FCTG will now turn its immediate attention to assisting customers who are directly impacted by the UK’s decision to place South Africa back on its restrictive red list. This travel ban has effectively halted flights between the two countries and forced returning UK residents into mandatory quarantine.
At this stage, it’s unknown how long the ban imposed by the UK, which traditionally supplies the bulk of South Africa’s summer travellers, will last as scientists grapple with the grizzly details of B.1.1.529.
“We are aware many of our customers were looking forward to Black Friday shopping but believe the responsible thing to do given the current uncertainties is to sadly cancel our Black Friday sale so that our experts can focus all their energy on assisting our customers at this time,” said Stark.
“We are in constant contact with our suppliers and will communicate on our channels as news unfolds.”
(Compiled by Luke Daniel)
