Countries listed as offering delays to Consumers included, Spain (Majorca), Portugal, Italy & Brussels.

In the last few days, I have been on the radio to answer questions about the great scandal of Brits abroad having to apparently wait up to 4 hours to pass through border controls.

The background to this problem stems from the decisions made within the Schengen area, where increased border checks on non-Schengen Citizens would be carried out.

The Schengen area was designed to enhance an area of the European Union, by offering a border-free passage between its Citizens.

The UK has never been part of Schengen, but as current members of the EU, we hold EU Citizenship and can therefore currently pass through the channel marked EU Passports and through the chip in our passports, we can take advantage of the e-passport gates.

The increased checks now follow a period from the last 2 to 3 years, whereby mainland Europe suffered with many terror attacks and indeed the Schengen area suffered criticism from those outside the area, that security controls needed to be tightened.

How rich it was then to discover that airlines and a government Minister were crying foul at what they viewed as either unnecessary checks so affecting commercial activity or that these airports were just simply incompetent! Lord Callanan had decided that he was going to talk to his counterparts to get them to ease the chaos and to ensure “tourists are able to start their holidays and spend money across Europe”; the irony from a UK government Minister is stunning!

But let’s just look at the reality. Yes, border checks have increased, but in the case of Majorca, enjoying a tourist boom because of the collapse of tourism to the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, its airport is reporting the biggest increase in flights this year! Its airport is somewhat tired and indeed my own experience of passing through this airport witnessed hundreds of holidaymakers simply being waved through a small passageway by two police officers. The island is clearly creaking under the volume of tourism and this is having an affect on its infrastructure leading to protests on the island. Were they prepared, was the infrastructure up to the task; it seems not?

Now let’s consider how we enter the UK. I have recently travelled through Heathrow’s Terminal 5 on 2 occasions in the last 6 weeks. On both occasions there were extremely long queues through the border control, with it seems very few staff on duty to deal with and manage the arrival of passengers from all over the world. There are 26 e-passport machines and on each occasion only 9 were working. This led to queues for EU passport holders for up to 45 minutes. However, if you were a non-EU passport holder, the wait was clearly longer, evidenced by the fact on my last passage through the terminal, there were tables with bottles of water available for the waiting passengers; welcome to Global Britain!

But reaction to the issue was to see one major UK newspaper cry out ‘Now EU Spoil our holidays’; and there were many other comments like that!

Whilst it is not the fault of holidaymakers that a destination is ill-prepared or suffers with poor facilities, there is some irony in the call for tighter border controls, yet, when the decisions resulting in those increased ‘protections’ affect our travel plans, our desire for greater security soon evaporates!

Throughout the terrible attacks over the last few years, I have spent a great deal of time in the press and radio, calling for a radical rethink on how we deal with our travel security and yes, I stated that even if checks had to be increased, we had to as Citizens accept that this would introduce an inconvenience in our lives, but, it would also offer frustration on those who carry out these vile attacks.

To suggest that somehow the EU is responsible and is exerting a ‘brexit’ revenge not only insults many readers but ignores the complexity of the ‘new normal’ in travel.

As we travel to our favoured destinations, we must never forget the horrors of Brussels airport or the carnage of Nice or Sousse. As Travel Consumers, we need to accept our part in the complex world of travel, accept the rationale, do our research on airports and destinations, get to airports earlier and put to bed the childish notions being offered by some so-called online commentators or the mainstream press!