The 'Four Nations' approach to the festive season announced on 24th November still leaves our tourism sector in an uncertain position.
England has already published guidance for the 5 day festive period (23rd – 27th December) where, if you form a 3 household ‘Christmas bubble’, you can visit each other’s homes and stay overnight in private rented accommodation but you cannot meet your ‘Christmas bubble’ in any other indoor settings (e.g. pubs, restaurants, theatres etc) and all of these rules will still be dependent upon their Tier.
As of yet there is no clear guidance on what restrictions, if any, will be in place for ‘Christmas bubbles’ in Wales. The next Welsh Government review will be on the 3rd December (next Thursday) when England come out of their lockdown.
We are expecting at this review to receive the clarification over Christmas along with the update on whether there will be a reintroduction of travel restrictions for people travelling from high incident areas into Wales.
We know that many of our businesses are frustrated that clearer WG guidance has not been available and feel that we are one step behind England who have already released theirs.
MWT and the Wales Tourism Alliance are in regular contact with the WG and we are lobbying hard for urgent clarity. We are also pressing hard for clearer guidance around New Year as this is also an important time for our hospitality sector.
Our advice to businesses at this stage is that if you are taking bookings over the Christmas period that you do so with caution and to be mindful that the position in Wales has not yet been confirmed.
We understand that this is far from ideal and once we have more information we will of course let everyone know.
