Travel with Katie Butler: Boosters and third doses will appear on the COVID Pass making it easy for people to show their vaccine status when travelling

Katie Butler writes: The UK now has two travel lists, the red list and ‘the rest of the world’.

The last review was on November 18 and there were no additions made to the red list, meaning there are still currently no countries or territories on the red list for travel to England and all countries remain on the rest of the world list.

Having both doses of the vaccine has quickly become the norm for entering countries without quarantine or restrictions and last week we saw some countries tightening travel restrictions by putting an expiry date on vaccine validity.

This means that to be classed as fully-vaccinated you will be required to have received a booster jab within a specified time frame.

Thankfully the Government responded quickly to this, as there were concerns that the booster did not show on your NHS records.

On November 19 the Government announced that boosters and third doses will appear on the Covid pass in England, making it easy for people to show their vaccine status when travelling abroad.

Booster and third doses will show up automatically in the digital Covid pass but will not be immediately available via the Covid pass letter service. This will be updated in due course.

We started to see restrictions tighten in some parts of Europe, including Austria, The Netherlands and Ireland.

Austria entered full national lockdown on Monday, with most gathering places including restaurants and bars, ordered to close for 10 days.

In response to this, Jet2holidays rightly cancelled holidays and flights to Austria travelling up to December 1 and swiftly offered a new destination or a full refund.

We are keeping a very close eye on the rest of Europe, especially as it is a very popular time of year to travel to European cities and experience the delightful Christmas markets.

We have a busy week ahead this week, I am delighted once again to be invited to the Jet2holidays VIP conference which this year will be a one day event held in Leeds.

It is an honour to be invited as we are among the top selling independent agencies in the UK.

Not bad going for a small independent agency in Heckmondwike!

Chief Executive Steve Heapy will speak at the conference, as well as other members of the senior management team.

Amidst all the passenger locater forms, Covid passports and high demand for holiday bookings, we are delighted this week to launch our annual Mission Christmas Cash for Kids. Once again, we are an official drop-off point for this cause.

We are collecting unwrapped toys and gifts for local children that for one reason or another will not be receiving Christmas presents this year.

If you would like to help us with our mission, please drop any donations in store before December 16, to give us time to deliver.

We absolutely love doing this to help local children and this year we hope to make it our biggest collection yet.