[SimonS1]

So the latest set of restrictions are out.

PCR test before returning to UK and two more on days 2 and 8. Plus a hotel “package” at £1,750 per person all in (so £175 per day).

Interesting to read on Paul Charles twitter feed that the Government have been signing up hotels at £30 per day plus £20 F&B allowance, so £500 for 10 days. So where is the extra £1,250 per person going?

In a 7-page document to possible quarantine hotels, @DHSCgovuk is offering to pay £30/night for each room and £20/night for F&B. That’s £50/night when a room in a Bath Road, Heathrow hotel would currently be £77. Bath Road is about to be labelled “Quarantine Row.” @ThePCAgency

— Paul Charles (@PPaulCharles) February 9, 2021

Let’s hope it works our better than the Compass/Chartwell model where they were caught profiteering at the expense of vulnerable school kids.

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PeterCoultas

[PeterCoultas]

Thanks Simon…. nice to know how our ministers are using covid to give a massive profit… the mark up on the covid tests is about the same…

I’ve always wondered how places I’ve visited and enjoyed in excellent hotels managed to cost about 3-4 times more on so-called packages that were supposed to save for you…. now I know… like our gov.uk just another con….

[Stevescoots]

Well I flew out of LHR T5 on friday to SGN via DOH. not once was i asked at LHR the purpose of my travel, in fact i did not see a single copper in our outside the terminal and only one border force before security. so much for checking if travel is essential. Now onto day 3 of quarantine in Saigon

[MartynSinclair]

[quote quote=1092418]Now onto day 3 of quarantine in Saigon[/quote]

Steve, seems the new badge or definition of a frequent traveller is the number of prisoner style quarantines suffered.

Do you still go to China and have to suffer further quarantine? How on earth are multi destination business trips going to be resolved and when… (2023/4 is my current GUESS).

Hope your current quarantine goes smoothly and fast for you..

It’s laughable how the UK are still making such a drama about the whole travel issue… just waiting for civil liberties to put their two penny’s worth in…. How difficult is it to put the quarantine procedure into place. Its not as if there is an ambience of filled and busy hotels around Heathrow….

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PeterCoultas

[Stevescoots]

Hi Martyn, I have not been able to get to my company in China since January last year, realistically not until May this year at the earliest the way things are looking. Whilst Hk has flat out banned everyone without a HKID the mainland has not yet made it close to impossible to enter. They cancelled all Visa’s including resident visas. you then had to apply for a new entry visa to be able to get into china. That required specific invites from the state in China. That took me 3 months to do by which time I was able to enter Vietnam, so I applied to get into China from VN and got my 30-day visa…which proved to be useless as there were no available flights within the 30 days to Guangzhou from anywhere, only into Beijing. That would just not work as it was mandated 3 weeks quarantine. 2 in hotel and one at home, now not having a home in BJ that would have meant 3 weeks in BJ. I would then have to stay at least another 6 weeks to process my new resident visa which would mean spending Xmas and new year in China. Without going into politics many of my friends who have been long term expats and even married to Chinese nationals have faced what we would constitute harassment from the state demanding constant tests and tracking even if they have not even left the town they live. banned from local restaurants etc just for not being Chinese and this is only recently. Fortunately, my management team has worked for me for over a decade and are very good, so I am in no mad rush to go back!

Multi travel bookings is all but impossible. I think Tim was going crazy last year the number of flights I was booking and then being cancelled, I think at one point airlines owed me over 20K in refunds. This year I had a flight on CX booked in early January that got cancelled when HK banned all transits from UK, that needed me to resubmit all my paperwork in VN with a new schedule on EK. That EK flight got cancelled 1 week before as UK banned flights from DXB so needed another mad rush to switch to QR which again needed the documents resubmitting. Fortunately, the flight date was the same as EK, so it was able to be done within 24 hours. QR was excellent customer service in VN although 12 hours in DOH airport was a killer. The hotel was fully booked, the sleep rooms in the lounge were available but they had building work going on so impossible, was then moved to the business centre only to be kept awake by the security door alarm every time staff came thru.
It took me 30 minutes from getting off the plane to getting on the transport to quarantine hotel with all the checking, that is faster than most times through LHR. After a messy start Vn has the entry process streamlined , the only thing stopping the UK is a lack of will and not willing to throw people at the problem.

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MartynSinclair

[MartynSinclair]

Thanks Steve. Your post does highlight once again, how closed Asia (and the world) has become. It also begs the question, who has the right approach to border control for passengers (not commercial goods), Asia with it’s tight and strict controls or the UK, with – well as you demonstrated last week, very little (except ‘this is what we intend doing’).

Late last year, I had a crazy idea of trying to see if there was a cost effective way of copying Noel Phillips’s around the world trip in 80 hours.

Tim had a go, but even back then it was virtually impossible and the cost…. WOW…..

Half way through Q1, I feel very pessimistic about a business trip to Asia this year…. without the need to quarantine either end…. Lets see if the Government cave into pressure though for 2 weeks by the beach in Spain….

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rferguson

[canucklad]

[quote quote=1092495]Half way through Q1, I feel very pessimistic about a business trip to Asia this year…. without the need to quarantine either end…. Lets see if the Government cave into pressure though for 2 weeks by the beach in Spain….[/quote]

News update from north of the border….. Miss Doom & Gloom’s latest dictatorial proclamation at her daily briefing yesterday . …. ” I have to say NO to foreign holidays and travel overseas this year ”
She went on to dampen our spirits further by suggesting “Staycations” are also uncertain to go ahead.

On the back of this news, someone suggested / promoted that we all invest in taking Zoom virtual holidays this year , thus we can stay in lockdown longer —- 2 questions immediately popped into my head

1) Zoom holidays ? , haven’t you heard of the travel channel ?
2) Are you completely bonkers ?

My mate in HK (CX Captain) says he now will have to go into hotel quarantine for 14 days , every time he lands back in HK. Reckons the HK authorities really turning the screw on CX for political reasons . CX trying to sweeten the blow by offering 5 week trips ?

[Stevescoots]

[postquote quote=1092701]

There is a lot of frustration in Hk over the 3 week quarantine. Friend of mine had to travel to Vietnam (safe country back in Jan) for a project, he had 2 weeks qurantine on arrival there, 2 weeks work then 3 weeks qurantine on the way back into HK. From my many friends in the SAR not one understands why it is so long, why Hong kong residents are still banned from entering HK if they have been in UK past 14 days (not even the mainland did this). I had an online glass of wine with some friends in HK who work at CX and some who lost their jobs and they all feel the aircrew enforced quarantine is political designed to bring CX to collapse for other players to move in. Other airlines bring 2 sets of crew in but as CX is the home base its almost impossible for them to do that. I may be wrong but isnt HK the only region to do this?

[PeterCoultas]

Great news…. quarantine for those entering the UK from red list countries with a typically ill-thought-out government response…. long queues with all those infected red list passengers milling about and infecting those previously uninfected while waiting to enter their expensive hotels…. and the funny6 thing is that many of the “red list” countries have lower infection and death rates than the UK…

[SimonS1]

[postquote quote=1092764]

But it helps with the Mail readers who insist “something must be done”….

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PeterCoultas

[MartynSinclair]

Interesting, the Daily Mail editorial team “the prospect of seeing arrivals “herded to a budget hotel by coach and detained for 10 days” raises deeply troubling questions.”

The Times editorial team however, confirms “Better late than never,”

… when discussing the UK hotel quarantine.

Seems it is The Times saying “something must be done”

[canucklad]

[quote quote=1092730]had an online glass of wine with some friends in HK who work at CX and some who lost their jobs and they all feel the aircrew enforced quarantine is political designed to bring CX to collapse for other players to move in.[/quote]

Gut instinct says to me, that CX’s existence as a world beating . globally admired airline based in Hong Kong is at odds with Beijing’s paranoid view of a insular inward looking non threatening business that they can control. I’ve no doubt the communist party see CX as one of the last bastions of colonialism .
Sure Carrie Lam will be told to undermine it , hopefully I’m way of the mark.

Hilarious news today …… Scotland’s no nonsense approach to quarantining came into effect yesterday . Arriving passengers corralled and herded into captivity for 10 days. Oooops, if you arrived on a connecting flight from Dublin, all bets are off , and so in the immortal words of Mel Gibson ….. ” FReeeeDommm ” today
Are these people fit to run our country ?

[EasternPedlar]

I’ve been looking at the rules for returning to the UK from a non-red list country. £210 is payable in advance as fees for the days 2 & 8 tests, plus there’s 10 days quarantine at home. Test to release on day 5 is still an option, and I’m wondering why the second test is then on day 8 rather than on day 5!

There is a list of approved test-to-release laboratories. Each has set its own fee, which can only be found out by calling them. I called 5 labs, and the fees quoted ranged between £190 and £350! This being a statutory test, surely the fees should have fixed by the government at a sensible level. An RT/PCR test costs £8 out here (and they make a profit out of that), so clearly much profiteering is taking place in the UK.

It’s frustrating to see such chaos and disorganisation.

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DerekVH, PeterCoultas

[SimonS1]

[quote quote=1092866]I called 5 labs, and the fees quoted ranged between £190 and £350![/quote]

It is really frustrating. The one I use (Express Test at Gatwick Airport) is £99, Collinson at London City is £99 as well.

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EasternPedlar

[DavidSmith2]

[postquote quote=1092866]

thanks for this. So, if I were to come over, I would have to pay for tests on day 2 and day 8, even if I also pay separately for a ‘test to release’ on day 5? So what happens to the test on day 8? Is that still required?

[Author]

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