Britons travelling to popular destinations such as Spain, Portugal and Italy could face border queues of up to six hours, experts have warned, as research suggests tourist hotspots could lose billions of pounds due to trip disruptions.
Issues stemming from the implementation of the EU’s Entry/Exit System (EES) are continuing to cause headaches for holidaymakers and tourism hubs alike, with one airline trade body warning of “unacceptable” waiting times that have already caused passengers to miss flights.
According to The Times, Rafael Schvartzman, vice-president for Europe at the International Air Transport Association, told its annual meeting at the weekend: “What we are seeing is a very hard risk of really challenging times or waiting times, talking about expectations of three, four, five, six hours, which is unacceptable.”
Andrew Harrison-Chinn, chief marketing officer of travel benefits platform Dragonpass, said that in some locations, passengers were seeing regular delays of two to three hours, rising to six hours at peak times such as Monday mornings or midday Saturday.
Smaller airports among the most affected
Spain is one of the nations worst hit by the implementation of EES biometric checks. Harrison-Chinn said typical “bottleneck” destinations were smaller airports that see a large volume of British or other non-EU travellers, but lack the necessary infrastructure to efficiently herd arrivals through the system.
Popular destinations such as Palma de Mallorca, Alicante and Lanzarote airports are among those that “have been affected quite greatly”, he said.
Watch out for peak hours
Travel expert Jane Bolton, of Erna Low, concurred that “popular European destinations like Spain, Portugal and Italy are among the major hubs seeing the biggest impact”, particularly for passengers registering biometric details for the first time.
“Peak travel times, including early mornings and weekends, are likely to see the longest queues with an influx of passengers,” she said.
Consequences of delays were observed as early as the first weekend of the full EES rollout, when 122 easyJet passengers at Milan Linate airport reportedly watched their plane to Manchester depart without them and were left waiting for days for a replacement, or were forced to pay out of pocket for alternative travel plans.
There have been reports of longer wait times at larger European airports including Amsterdam, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Zurich.
Palma de Mallorca airport could be among those badly affected, experts say (Photo: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)Schengen countries could face multi-billion losses
Research by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) found that Europe risks losing tens of billions in visitor spending due to border delays linked to EES checks.
The WTTC analysis, extrapolating a survey of 2,500 travellers from the UK, US, Canada and Australia to 2026 visitor forecasts suggests that up to 41 million arrivals and $45.4bn (£34bn) could be at risk if significant delays persist.
Thirty-nine per cent of British travellers said they would be much less likely to travel with a three-hour or greater-delay scenario.
A separate survey of 1,000 UK holidaymakers, by travel company Holiday Extras, found that 18 per cent of people said they were likely to change their travel plans this year due to queues at border control.
This could translate to a £720m loss in revenue from British tourists for Spain, £370m for France and £190m for Italy this year.
Best destinations for avoiding the queues
EES checks have been rolled out to Schengen-area countries only – meaning travellers heading to holiday destinations outside this zone, such as Cyprus and Albania, are not subject to them.
In April, Greece suspended EES biometric checks for UK nationals during the summer season. The country’s travel minister, Olga Kefalogianni, said she did not want visitors to be “burdened” by bureaucratic procedures when entering or leaving the country, adding that Greece was making efforts to ensure that frontier checks take “less than a couple of minutes”.
“We already have a lot of holidaymakers in Greece right now, and we’re looking forward to welcoming even more as the season evolves”, she added.
Last month, Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro also threatened to suspend EES checks, a move backed by the mayors of Lisbon and Faro.
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