I know exactly where I hope to go in 2016. I just don’t know exactly when. As in any year, the best value is to be found is in locations where the balance of supply and demand favours the traveller. You can expect lower prices, a warmer welcome and – at a time when more people are travelling than ever – a welcome absence of crowds. So, seek out destinations where there is excess capacity and a shortage of willing visitors.
For Tunisia and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, the supply of flights from UK airlines is currently zero due to Foreign Office safety warnings. Five years after the Arab Spring began in Tunisia, the north African nation finds itself on the Foreign Office “no go” list – a decision applied in the wake of two massacres of tourists. In March, 21 people died in an attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis; in June, 38 tourists were gunned down on the beach at Sousse. The Foreign Office still says: “We do not believe the mitigation measures in place provide adequate protection for British tourists in Tunisia at the present time.” And the FO ban on UK airlines flying to the main Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh still stands, after the as-yet-unexplained loss of a Russian charter flight that crashed shortly after take-off for St Petersburg; 224 passengers and crew died.