Yes, half-term holidays are in chaos – but we need to stop blaming the travel industry

Some have put the dystopian scenes in airports across Europe down to the ‘greed’ of airlines, airport managers and travel operators, but I don’t think that’s fair

What would you do if your company was on the brink of collapse? (PA)

The definition of inclement weather is probably a hail storm in the last week of May. As bullets of freezing rain rolled down my windows a couple of days ago, a notification popped up on my phone. It was a picture message from a friend, a photo of her young son wandering the golden sands of Corfu. The sky was a perfect azure. I cursed.

Then again, I reflected, I could have been caught up in the endless queues at airports across Europe. I could have prepared my children for a week of fun in the sun, only to find that our flight was cancelled, and faced a trawl home on the tube accompanied by endless wailing of “it’s not fair”. The hailstorm would have felt worse under those conditions, I suspect.

After almost three years of not travelling overseas, I’ve got used to this sense of stasis. Due to a cocktail of events, there won’t be a foreign holiday for my family this year; we’ve got a week on the beach, whatever the weather, in dear old Blighty planned instead. Watching the half-term chaos I can’t help be feel grateful for my reluctance to get involved with the faff of international travel post-Covid.

Just like my failure to experience Glastonbury Festival because I can’t organise myself to jump endless hoops to prove my identity, the sheer amount of admin involved in getting abroad – from Covid passes to secure bookings – now puts me off. I miss the freedom of just getting on a plane or a train and seeing where it takes you. Life is getting back to normal, but we’re not there yet.

Clearly, most Brits feel differently. After two very long years of restrictions and hesitations, people are desperate for a change of scenery – and the travel industry has found itself underprepared for the rush. And unlike the members of the Conservative Party, who are scrabbling around for someone other than Boris Johnson to make liable for everything that’s going wrong right now, I don’t blame them.

Alongside hospitality and entertainment, travel was among the sectors hit hardest by the conflation of the pandemic and Brexit. Job losses were vast, future planning became impractical as Covid restrictions waxed and waned, and, while social and political norms are in such flux, consumer behaviour is impossible to predict.

Some have put the dystopian scenes in airports across Europe down to the “greed” of airlines, airport managers and travel operators, but I don’t think that’s fair. What would you do if your company was on the brink of collapse? What if you had no idea how many of your prospective customers would actually turn up for their booking, rather than cancel and demand a refund? Travel companies have already suffered endless “false starts” over Covid unlocking. Overbooking was not necessarily irresponsible; from a business perspective, it was inevitable – and probably sensible.

But that’s not how the cabinet sees it. Desperate for the electorate to look away from the inevitable consequences of Brexit (nowhere near enough staff available to fill the rapidly opening vacancies in travel, hospitality and healthcare) they’ve started a nice line in victim-blaming the travel companies.

Arts minister Stephen Parkinson, a former advisor to Theresa May, has popped up stating that travel companies should have been ready for the rush to leave the British Isles this jubilee bank holiday week, and that the failure to do so has led to “a lot of distress” from families whose plans have been hobbled at the last moment. Well, that’s something we’ve all got rather used to in the last two years.

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I’m not sure the public shares Parkinson’s view that easyJet, Tui and other travel giants are solely at fault, and rightly so. The rush to blame someone else is rooted in a hard conservatism defined by a “pull up your bootstraps” mentality. Within this worldview, every success or failure is entirely within one’s own personal control, whatever the political and social winds that batter you (except, one imagines, responsibility for the parties being hosted in your own grace-and-favour central London apartment).

But scapegoating like this only works when you’re able to appoint blame on one person, group or entity that others cannot empathise with. Had we not all faced personal disruption, sudden removal of our liberties and incomes, a failure to be able to plan for our own lives, and so on, then maybe we’d get behind it. Now? I don’t think we buy it. None of us knew – or still know – quite how the next economic chapter will pan out.

When Parkinson says that travel companies “need to make sure people can get away and enjoy holidays” I wonder if that’s a synonym for “get away and forget about the mess we’re causing in Westminster”. Travellers are in desperate need of a break, but the reasons for the travel crisis are far more complex than a balls-up on the part of the travel industry. Happily, though they must be frustrated beyond measure bunking down by a check-in desk, the voting public understands that too.