Thousands of vacations to Canary islands canceled over increasing Covid infections

Travel organizations are cancelling holidays to the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands due to reports that the coronavirus travel advice for the islands will be escalated from code yellow to code orange. Code orange travel advice strongly discourages recreational travel to an area. This affects the vacation plans of tens of thousands of Netherlands residents, NOS reports.

Reports say that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will escalate the travel advice for the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands on Friday due to the number of coronavirus infections increasing on some of the islands. The Ministry would not confirm this to NOS.

Travel organization TUI is cancelling all holidays to these islands from July 16 to August 2. Affected customers will be notified. They can either get their money back or choose another destination.

Tour operator Sunweb said that it will also cancel trips to these islands if they go to code orange. "We follow the advice of the Ministry and therefore do not fly to red and orange areas. No matter how unfortunate that is for holidaymakers," a spokesperson said to the broadcaster.

Corendon will continue to fly to the islands, a spokesperson said to NOS. "If you pay close attention to all measures, the chance that you will become infected is just as great as in the Netherlands."

This will affect many thousands of Netherlands residents, Mirjam Dresme of travel agencies' association ANVR said, though she could not give exact numbers. "Bookings are now made shortly in advance because until recently many countries was still orange. As a result we do not have a good overview of how many travelers are where."

"I can imagine that travelers prefer not to go to code orange areas anymore. At the same time, there will be people who think: I have already been fully vaccinated and want to go," Dresme said. She called it a shame that no distinction is made between the different islands."I can imagine that one island stands out in terms of infections and that causes the problems."

Dresme called for travel advice to look more specifically at regions instead of escalating the warnings for entire countries or groups of islands. "Then you will affect fewer travelers and travel companies, who have been at a standstill for a year and a half."