Travel Agent recently caught up with Alison Metcalfe, chair of the U.S.A. chapter of the European Travel Commission (ETC) and head of Tourism Ireland for North America to find out the latest news for Europe’s reopening.
The European Union on June 18 put the United States on Europe’s “green” list, essentially recommending that member states lift restrictions on non-essential travel from third countries, and that included the United States. As countries have reopened throughout the summer, each has its own ability to impose its own restrictions and protocols, but as Metcalfe puts it, “Europe is open and it’s certainly welcoming U.S. visitors.”
“What we’ve seen is that as countries have opened, demand has increased to those countries, and with that, [there has been] an increase in air capacity and flights have returned," she added. "But we at the ETC and the individual member countries want to make sure that the information we put out there is accurate so that when travelers return to Europe, they do so in a safe and very responsible manner.”
For this reason, Metcalfe strongly suggests visiting the website reopen.europa.eu for the very latest information on what’s happening country-by-country as information, in some cases, changes daily.
For more on Europe’s reopening, watch our interview here:
The ETC over the past three months has been working closely with the travel industry on a “Reassurance” campaign to communicate the latest situations in Europe, to focus on the health and safety protocols that member states have put in place, and to present some of the new experiences that have been developed during lockdown that will be available to American travelers. This has included a number of webinars that focus on the ETC’s three core passion points, Creative Cities, Heritage and Genealogy, as well as the Great Outdoors. That campaign has just wrapped and a consumer campaign, “Europe Invites the Curious,” has been launched to inspire American travelers to revisit Europe and to start planning their trips for 2021 and 2022. It runs through September.
Here’s one more word of advice for travel advisors from Metcalfe:
“If you have clients that want to find out more about Europe, and particularly if they’re planning trips for the future that might involve more than one destination, go to visiteurope.com. It’s a great resource, as well. There’s some wonderful content there and you will also be able to use some of the video content that you’ll see running in our campaigns at the moment.”
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