47 countries including South Africa will be removed from the travel red list on Monday 11 October, the UK’s Department for Transport announced this afternoon.
Fully-vaccinated people travelling from South Africa will be treated the same as fully-vaccinated UK nationals on arrival. All arrivals must still complete a passenger locator form.
The only countries that will remain on the red list are: Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Venezuela. Arrivals from red list countries are still required to pay for 10 days of hotel quarantine.
David Frost, CEO of the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association said that this decision is long overdue, ‘but it will come as a huge relief to hundreds of thousands of tourism workers in South Africa, in addition to scores of holiday companies in the UK. Our UK operators have already seen a surge in enquiries from sun-starved Brits looking for a winter escape, and early estimates suggest that upwards of 300,000 British passport holders expect to visit friends and family or take advantage of highly-competitive holiday deals across Southern Africa in the coming months.’
Andrew Stark, Flight Centre Travel Group MD, was encouraged that South Africans can now eventually be reunited with family and friends, able to visit them over the December and January holiday period. ‘South African holidaymakers now have much more choice, with many bestselling destinations welcoming us, such as Mauritius and Thailand among others, and with the USA set to open to vaccinated travellers with visas from November.’
