Mumbai: Quarantine fears make many cancel, reschedule international trips | Mumbai News – Times of India

MUMBAI: It was deja vu for international travellers as well as the travel industry as Wednesday brought a spate of flight cancellations and rescheduling even as social media was inundated with queries from worried passengers about hotel quarantine, much like the past two pandemic summers.
Late on Tuesday, the Maharashtra government had imposed new entry restrictions, among which was a mandatory week-long hotel quarantine for passengers arriving from or even transiting from “at-risk” countries, which included those in Europe, including the UK, Singapore and Mauritius, among others.
“Travellers have panicked. To avoid quarantine they’re planning rerouting through other states and cities out of Maharashtra. They will stay for a day, obtain RT-PCR and then arrive in Maharashtra,” said Jay Bhatia, vice-president, Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI).
The association sent a letter to the state government with an appeal for a standard entry protocol across the country as laid down by the central government.
“Agents will face huge hurdles, travellers will be rescheduling, cancelling their bookings for travel into Maharashtra, especially Mumbai. There will be huge losses once again that will impact the economy. Refunds from airlines and hotels will become a challenge like last year,” said Bhatia. “We were seeing revival in the travel and tourism sector but this directive by the Maharashtra government will put a spoke in the revival process,” he added.
Prashant Pitti, co-founder, EaseMyTrip, said: “People were gradually opening up to the idea of international travel. In comparison to January-March 2021, we had witnessed a 50% jump in international travel bookings.”
A travel agent, requesting anonymity, said most cancellations and rescheduling came from students and passengers arriving and transiting from the UK and Europe.
For those who have decided to go ahead with the India trip, booking hotels for quarantine is a problem.
Another person in the travel business said, “Not one hotel we called today said they had rooms for quarantine.”
Social media queries poured in as confused passengers booked on international flights sought answers. Neel D tweeted to the Mumbai airport: “I will be travelling Germany-Doha-Mumbai with a 5-year old kid, arriving on December 3. Is there quarantine exemption for parents traveling with kids?” Others asked how could they book hotels, how would they do an RT-PCR test before boarding a connecting flight, among other queries.