Negative travel advice for faraway countries to change soon

The blanket advice not to travel to most all distant countries unless absolutely necessary, may soon be a thing of the past. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working on a revision of the global negative travel advice, a spokesperson told De Telegraaf.

For the past year and a half, a 'code orange' or 'code red' travel advice applied for almost all non-European countries. The warning discourages all but absolutely necessary trips. Code red strongly discourages all travel to the applicable region.

"The virus is not going away. You cannot keep the world locked up and we recognize the importance of travel," the Ministry spokesperson said, according to the newspaper. He added that the traveler's safety and Dutch public health will remain paramount in the travel advice.

This step is great news for the travel sector, which has been struggling under travel restrictions since the start of this crisis in March 2020. Travel agencies' umbrella organization ANVR already stopped discouraging travel to code orange countries, especially as the government is ending most of its coronavirus support packages for companies on October 1.