Omichron Closes Switzerland To Brit Skiers

At 8pm on November 27, the Swiss health authorities added the following countries to its list of countries with a variant of concern – Czech Republic, Egypt, Malawi, Netherlands and United Kingdom. The health office website states that “anyone entering Switzerland from these countries must present a negative test result and quarantine for ten days. This also applies to vaccinated and recovered persons”.

More countries have since been added to the Swiss list of countries with the Omicron variant of concern and are subject to entry restrictions: Angola, Australia, Denmark, Zambia, Nigeria, Portugal, Japan and Canada.

This means that Switzerland now requires UK visitors to quarintine for 10 days. There is no quarantine requirement for travellers arriving in Switzerland from the UK who wish to travel onward to another country, as long as travel through Switzerland is less than 24 hours and does not involve a stopover.

Joe Ponte UK tour operator Inghams' CEO, said “Following the news that Switzerland has imposed a 10 day quarantine on all UK arrivals, we have sadly suspended all December 2021 departures to Switzerland. Customers impacted by this news are being offered the option to move their booking free of charge or to cancel their booking with a full refund.

“We are extremely disappointed for all our customers who were looking forward to a ski holiday in Switzerland in the coming month. Switzerland accounts for around 6% of the holidays in our winter programme, and booking numbers for the coming ski season have been strong.

“While many of our customers remain eager to return to the slopes, we understand that some customers with later departure dates may be feeling apprehensive about their holiday following this latest update. With this in mind, we continue to offer flexibility via our ‘No Fee to change up to 28 days before departure’ policy. Allowing our customers the option to move their holiday to a later date or different destination.”