The travel industry has overcome its “last big hurdle” to mounting a recovery with the slashing of the red list, according to the boss of Kuoni.

Speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast, Derek Jones, UK chief executive of Kuoni parent Der Touristik, said: “It’s fabulous news. It felt to us as though this was the switch. Travel for us is now back on – there’s no two ways about it and we can see that already in demand.”

He added: “For us, the Maldives and Mauritius had already come off the red list, so in a way we’d had a bit of a run-up. It was also pretty well trailed – so I think for those of us in the travel industry that were following the evolution of events, we pretty much knew that this was coming.

“It was maybe not the big fanfare of previous announcements; it almost felt as though this was the last big one that we needed to get under our belt in order to be able to push on with what we were already planning to do; but in terms of moving the sector forward, it’s a very important announcement. It almost feels as though this was the last big hurdle we needed to get over.”