Easing foreign travel restrictions and increased confidence has led to a Co Fermanagh travel agent being ‘extremely busy’ since the beginning of the year.
Many countries, including the United States and popular summer destinations such as Spain and Portugal, have relaxed entry requirements for foreign visitors.
Richard Cooper of Carefree Travel in Enniskillen says his business has been ‘inundated’ with booking requests and advice since January.
“We’ve been really busy since the beginning of January, we’ve been inundated with booking requests,” Richard told MyFermanagh.
“It’s been extremely busy, people are definitely getting a lot more confident about travelling this summer as well as people travelling now to places like the Canary Islands for winter sun holidays.
“We’ve also seen a huge amount of honeymoon couples who haven’t been able to travel for the last two years now putting together their holidays for further afield destinations.
“Previously there wouldn’t have been the confidence or the restrictions were putting them off but generally now restrictions are being lifted every day to hundreds of countries.
“That is increasing people’s confidence to now look into finalising their plans.”
The last two years have been a difficult one for those in the travel industry as they have had to deal with the fallout of cancelled flights and travel restrictions, Richard added.
“Since 2020 people haven’t been confident to travel, many people rebooked their holidays three, four, five times,” he said.
“People still want reassurance and that’s why we are finding ourselves so busy because they are coming to us asking questions, especially in relation to things like travel insurance or entry requirements for particular countries.
The travel agent added there are still some destinations which have strict travel restrictions, but these are easing every day.
“Everybody booking stuff now will know that things can change, but countries not accepting tourists are few and far between now.
“There are some countries in longer haul destinations where you still can’t go but as every day goes past more and more countries are dropping their requirements and we get news of that on a daily basis.
“Obviously some of them are going to have certain conditions depending on what Covid is like in their country but most people should be able to travel hassle free now.”
