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It was Thursday 01 Oct, about noon time, when the whole industry in Poland have been surprised by unexpected decision of Greek Government to introduce mandatory covid PCR test for Polish nationals entering Greece. In the era of many wise but sometimes not so wise decisions of various officials, this particular decision has generated millions of Euros of unnecessary financial losses on the side of Polish tour operators. Why? Because the decision announced on Thursday 01 Oct would have been effective as of 00:01 hrs on Saturday 03 Oct. The quick analysis proved that even if all tour operators had been able to inform all passengers departing Saturday and Sunday (several thousand clients) that they needed to make the tests on Friday morning, there was no way the actual results of the tests would be available before Saturday as it usually takes more than 24 hrs to get a document from the lab. The consequence is very simple – we cannot legally send any single client to Greece as from 03 Oct but at the same we have thousands of clients just finishing their holidays and returning to Poland. The outcome? – more than 70 aircrafts sent totally empty to Greece to bring all the clients back. And all this could have been totally avoided if only we had more than one day to react!

PIT, Poland