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       KUWAIT CITY, June 27: According to managers of travel and tourism offices, reservations made by expatriates for the month of August are almost negligible until now, despite the Cabinet’s decision to allow non-Kuwaitis to enter the country starting from the beginning of August, provided they obtain two doses of Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, reports Al-Rai daily. They attributed the reluctance of the expatriates to their fear of the repetition of the scenario of August last year when the state closed the airport and they were stuck in transit destinations such that many of them ended up returning to their countries. The managers said they expect the rate of reservations to increase significantly during the first two weeks of August, after expatriates receive assurance that the government would actually implement the decision to open the airport for them, and would not back down from that as it did previously.

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       On the other hand, they highlighted the high demand of Kuwaiti citizens to travel during the month of July, especially during the Eid al-Adha holidays, revealing that the seats available on various airlines for the Eid period are full. The managers explained that limiting the airport’s capacity to 3,500 passengers per day led to a jump in the ticket prices by about 200 percent. However, this did not discourage Kuwaitis from travelling, as the percentage of reservations increased by about 300 percent during the current month compared to the previous month.

       The most popular destinations among the Kuwaitis for travelling next month, especially on Eid holidays, included all touristic destinations of Turkey (Bodrum, Antalya and Trabzon), as well as Dubai, Cairo, Greece, Riyadh and the Maldives. London came last in the list of popular destinations. In this regard, a member of the Board of Directors of the Travel Offices Association Abdul Rahman Al-Kharafisaid the problem that expatriates are facing now is related to the failure of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to increase the capacity, even though the Council of Ministers decided in May to increase the number of arriving passengers on commercial flights coming from abroad to 5,000 passengers per day instead of only 1,000. He stressed that the airport’s capacity was raised last week only to 3,500 passengers, and the number of passengers allowed on board the planes coming to Kuwait was increased from 35 to 70 passengers only.

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