Tighter travel restrictions for UK residents are on the way – including hotel quarantine as used since last March in Asia and Australasia.

“There are still too many people coming in and out of our country every day,” said the home secretary, Priti Patel.

She has promised additional measures to reduce the number of people travelling as “a necessary step to protect the public”.

These are the key questions and answers.

Under current lockdown rules, no leisure travel is allowed for anyone living in the UK. 

Under proposed new measures, airlines, ferry firms and train operators will have to ask passengers departing from the UK the purpose of their journey – and turn away people who don't appear to qualify for going abroad (eg work, education, medical treatment and essential family reasons).

Clive Wratten, chief executive of the Business Travel Association, said: “Placing the burden of proof for the validity of travel onto international carriers is an untenable situation for companies and staff that are already at breaking point.”

There are currently many UK citizens and residents abroad for legitimate reasons and who will be returning home in due course.

Some of the people who are coming in now will have left the country before the third lockdown started in January and have been on long-stay trips – whether holidays or staying with family or partners they had not seen for months.

People who have been staying in a second property abroad are at liberty to return.

Some arrivals are travelling home to the UK for compassionate reasons, for example if a member of their family is dangerously ill.

A few “lost souls” are still returning to their families and homes in the UK after spending time abroad – often prolonged by lockdown measures in the location in which they were staying.

Business travel is continuing, mainly comprising professionals working in specialist fields such as medicine, media or the oil industry, or people attending job interviews. 

Some business leaders running multinational concerns are travelling, but there are very few executives visiting customers or suppliers.

During much of the coronavirus pandemic, the UK has had very  few travel restrictions.

While quarantine is currently mandatory for all overseas arrivals except for those from Ireland, it is rarely checked; only a quarter of the 12 million arrivals since it took effect in June 2020 have had their passenger locator forms checked. Only one in 5,000 has been issued with a fine for non-compliance – even though surveys have suggested that four out of five people who are supposed to be self-isolating are doing so.

Now the government is to impose mandatory hotel quarantine for arrivals from the 30 countries on the government’s “red list". 

These nations, mostly in southern Africa and South America are currently subject to specific restrictions. 

This is called a travel ban, but is actually a flight ban, aimed at limiting the spread of new variants of coronavirus.

Direct flights are not allowed from 12 African nations (Angola, Botswana, Democratic Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe). Flights from three island nations off the coast of Africa – Cape Verde, Mauritius and the Seychelles – have been banned. In normal times they are popular holiday destinations with direct flights from the UK.

The entire continent of South America, as well as Panama, is on the list – adding 14 more countries.

The most significant nation, though, in terms of British visitors and expatriates, is Portugal. At present it is the only European country subject to a flight ban.

British and Irish citizens, as well as third-country nationals with residential rights in the UK, can come in whenever they like but must follow the rules: currently self-isolating along with their households for 10 days, and soon undergoing hotel quarantine for 10 days.

Ministers are also considering tracking the phones of arriving travellers, to ensure they are complying with the rules, or establishing a system of daily registration with a central database.

Since there are no direct flights from any of the  high-risk countries (by order of the UK government), that could present problems to UK Border Force.

While everyone arriving in the UK must legally complete a passenger locator form, saying where they have been, a traveller from one of the high-risk countries who wishes to avoid the cost and discomfort of hotel quarantine may be tempted to breakf.

UK border officials will inspect passports, but evidence may not be immediately apparent. Because direct flights from locations currently designated as high risk are banned, passengers will be travelling in from “safe” countries. 

The home secretary has told Parliament: "From January 2020, the government have had a comprehensive strategy for public health measures at the border.”

Early in 2020, the UK imposed quarantine measures aimed at preventing the spread of the virus from known hotspots including China, Iran and northern Italy. On 13 March 2020 these measures ended.

The government said there was no point in continuing to insist on self-isolation because coronavirus was widespread in the UK.

Two days later, Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, imposed two weeks of self-isolation on arrivals from all countries. By the end of March, the law had been strengthened to make “hotel quarantine” mandatory. The measure was announced on 27 March and took effect the next day.

Three months later, on 8 June 2020, the UK government made a U-turn, going from no quarantine to quarantine from everywhere, with 14 days of self-isolation required.

A month after that, the concept of “travel corridors” took effect, allowing journeys from most European countries without self-isolation. But by late July Spain had lost exemption, and in the months since then most popular destinations have also had quarantine-free status removed.

In December, the time required for quarantine was reduced from 14 to 10 days, and in England “test to release” was brought in – allowing self-isolation to be halved for those who received a negative test result on day five.

On 18 January 2021, all quarantine exemptions were removed.

At present anyone arriving in the UK is free to take public transport home and stay there for 10 days (which can be reduced in England with a test taken after five days). If necessary, they can stay somewhere overnight on the way to their quarantine location.

Hotels are provided for arrivals from abroad who do not have a household with whom they can self-isolate, but there is no significant supervision.

Of the 12 million arrivals to England since June 2020, 3 per cent (about 400,000) have been checked upon by public health staff to ensure they are quarantining, Mr Shapps has said. The transport secretary added that checks are being increased.

In Australia, New Zealand and many Asian nations the standard arrangement is for the traveller to be escorted from the airport terminal to a nearby hotel, sometimes under police expert.

They have a number of conditions imposed, usually stipulating that they are not allowed to leave their room – though in some cases limited exercise opportunities are available at specific times.

Meals are delivered to the hotel room. In some cases, alcohol is available, but in many settings it is not.

Security guards are often deployed to try to ensure that quarantinees comply with the rules, and in some destinations hefty fines are levied for those caught breaking them.

Keith Legg went through quarantine in China. “Randomly allocated a hotel,” he reports. “Ours were OK, but others less so.

“Three meals per day provided, not allowed to order in from outside (though this changed). Alcohol not allowed, though we could bring some with us on arrival.

“Doctors on site: test on arrival, after seven days and on day 13 for departure. Temperature raised for any reason? Off to hospital.

“Released after exactly 14 days (to the minute!).”

Cambodia has a particularly intriguing variation on the theme, with mandatory testing on touchdown. All arrivals must pay US$30 (£22) for an overnight stay at hotel or waiting centre and the same again for three meals a day while waiting for test result.

“If one passenger tests positive for Covid-19, all those on the same flight will be quarantined for 14 days,” says the Foreign Office. 

The cost is US$1,176 (£863) to pay for the stay in a hotel or quarantine facility – but this includes meals, laundry, sanitary services, doctors and security services.

Border officials board the plane on arrival to give instructions. Passengers are escorted through the airport, including a health screen process, and taken to a “quarantine facility” of the government’s choice.“

"You will need to stay in your allocated room for 14 days and you won’t be able to have visitors,” says the Australian government. “Access to a balcony or open window can’t be guaranteed. You will be given three meals per day.

"Bring physical books or download movies ahead of time in case there are issues with the hotel Wi-Fi.

“Staff will not be able to enter or clean your room for you.

“You won’t be able to smoke in your room. This may mean you won’t be able to smoke for the duration of your quarantine stay.”

Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet, who himself was obliged to self-isolate on return from the Middle East to Australia in March 2020, warns: “You can’t bring your own booze for your 14-day stay. The hotel will charge you minibar prices for anything you drink.”

Currently there are sufficient empty hotel rooms. The swathe of restrictions, from a ban on leisure travel for all UK residents to the blanket quarantine requirement, means that total daily arrivals to the UK are down from tens of thousands at the start of the year to under 10,000. 

Those arriving from “travel ban” countries will number a few hundred per day at most.

Heathrow, the main access point to the UK, is surrounded by hotels, almost all of which are near-empty or closed due to lack of custom.

Other airports also have plenty of hotel capacity, with occupancy typically down to single-figure percentages.

Dover and Folkestone have plenty of hotels near the port and Eurotunnel terminal respectively. London St Pancras, the arrival point for Eurostar, has a hotel at the station and many more very close in the centre of the capital.

There are significant challenges about staffing, security and catering, but the should not be insurmountable. 

The traveller. A rough estimate of the cost is around £1,500 for 10 days in self isolation. For couples together it would probably be less, perhaps £2,000 for two.

The test-to-release scheme, which reduces quarantine in England, is likely to be suspended just weeks after it was introduced, so there is no prospect of saving by reducing the time in self-isolation.

The cost of providing security may be met by the government. There could also be some system for funding stays for arrivals who simply do not have the means to pay for their stay.

There has been plenty of time for officials here to study the concept and plan for the introduction of hotel quarantine, so it could be here within days.

But experience during the coronavirus pandemic shows there is no particular haste to bring in measures that are regarded as window dressing designed to please the public.

The trajectory as used for blanket quarantine last June and test-to-release in December, was roughly as follows. Day one: leaks to friendly publications. Days two to seven: ministers saying it could happen. Day eight: an actual announcement, but with details following several days later, and  the measure taking effect a week or two after that.

Accordingly I predict the measure will take effect between Friday 5 and Monday 15 February.

The government has a track record of allowing 35 hours to beat new travel rules. For many weeks from August 2020 onwards, Mr Shapps announced additions to the must-quarantine list at 5pm on Thursday, with the measure taking effect at 4am the following Saturday.

In the context of hotel quarantine, there is a big problem allowing that degree of flexibility. Home self-isolation may be annoying, but bearable, particularly for those lucky enough to have a garden. And it doesn’t cost £100 per night.

But hotel quarantine demands money as well as time. So there would be a surge of people getting on flights, ferries and trains to try to beat the deadline. That could inadvertently trigger greater risk, as well as not meeting the key need of a policy intended to apply rigorous conditions to arrivals.

The smart way to impose hotel quarantine is to give almost no leeway; to announce it in the evening, and to make it apply from noon the next day onwards. That should avoid “trapping” people who have embarked on long journeys to the UK, but without encouraging a mad rush.

That is unclear, and the government will not give a definite date. But the travel industry is desperate for an end point and hopes it will end before  the Easter long weekend: 2-5 April 2021. 

A spokesperson for the travel trade association, Abta, said: “The introduction of quarantine hotels for ‘red list countries’ builds on a mountain of existing measures for travel, and we need to see a clear plan for how these will be lifted.“

Jobs are being lost at an alarming rate and longstanding businesses have gone to the wall. The lack of financial support targeted at addressing the consequences for businesses of international travel restrictions needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.”

Some government sources have said hotel quarantine will last for six to eight weeks. That indicates an end point in late March or early April, though previous policies have been eased much sooner; blanket quarantine lasted only 33 days.

Government ministers insist it would be unwise to book a summer holiday at present.

Changing planes at London Heathrow to another UK destination, such as Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow or Belfast, is most unlikely to be permitted. To apply hotel quarantine other than at the point of arrival would undermine the whole principle of the policy.

That is the hope – but Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has indicated her government may go further.

She said: “Our preference is to have consistent quarantine rules across the UK, but if there is no agreement to go further on a four-nations basis, we will be considering going further ourselves.

“We will set out any additional measures next week.”

If additional countries are “red-listed” by Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, it will make enforcement difficult.

For example, were Scotland to add the United States to the hotel quarantine list, then a Scottish passenger from New York could successfully pass UK Border Force checks at Heathrow airport but become liable for guarded self-isolation when she arrives in Scotland.

That  scenario could be legally and logistically difficult.

Closing Heathrow, Manchester and other UK airports to passenger traffic could be mandated by the government. But it would cause immense problems for the very few people who are travelling at the moment, and ultimately is unlikely to do any good.

The transport secretary revealed earlier this month that only one in 1,000 of the coronavirus cases in England in December was brought in from abroad – and that was a month with plenty of people travelling, including 1.1 million through Heathrow.

Today the figure is likely to be far lower, due to the diminishing number of arrivals to the UK.