Ann: Trading Update, page-6

A tour organiser said to me a group of say 20 people may go to UK or USA on a coach or rail tour.

WEB sells a lot of these.

If they are tested say 72 hours before the return flight from Heathrow or Los Angeles on the way home and one is 'positive', he remains unsure whether the whole group would then be allowed to board the booked flight back to Australia (or on to the next destination).

As he commented 'it remains a minefield'.

This is the sort of nitty-gritty that prospective travellers may not initially know.

If they research and discover it's a problem, some will be reluctant to travel.

Many Australians book large group tours that see them all booked together on an airline of say APT's/Avalon Waterways/Scenic's choice for a river cruise or coach/rail tour in Europe, so this question is an important one.

Some operators and airlines (in the latter group, Emirates and Japan Airlines are two) may have COVID-19 policies to cover this eventuality but even if every last dollar in sudden hospital or enforced quarantine costs was not paid by individual travellers, falling sick overseas is not something anyone welcomes. It can mean if one's working having to take extra unscheduled leave, and an unhappy boss back in Oz who'd envisaged we'd be back at our workplace on a certain date.