Over 112,000 Brits on holiday in Portugal as it goes on amber list

From 17 May, when Portugal became a green list country, until 31 May there was  a total of 221,064 Brits who travelled out to the country.

On Thursday Portugal was taken off the government’s green list meaning millions of Brits who have booked holidays will now not be allowed to travel to the country.

Thousands of Brits are already in Portugal on holiday and will now have to return back to the UK before 4 am next Tuesday, or they will have to pay £120 for two PCR tests per person and will be forced to quarantine for 10 days.

As of 31 May the number of Brits who had travelled back from Portugal stood at 108,887. That leaves the 112,177 currently stuck there.

Conrad Poulson, chief executive officer at Huq Industries said, “Assuming the largest capacity Boeing 737 or equivalent can carry around 230 people that equates to around 487 flights to get every one of the remaining 112,177 people home.

“When you also factor in the five-day window [4 am Tuesday 8 June] before Portugal goes on the amber list, this rough calculation gives a sense of the scale of the issue for holidaymakers and those charged with getting them home.”

The research was carried out by Huq Industries, a mobility research business.

Huq counted the number of mobile panelists observed moving between the UK and Portugal from one day to the next and vice versa during May, and compared the historical values to the Civil Aviation Authority’s historical air passenger data to produce a weighted and validated result.

Huq’s extensive data set of real-time population mobility data, comprised of 1bn+ mobile geo-location data-points daily, is used by retailers, investors and the public sector to measure footfall across a range of consumer, business and industrial settings.