Travel / The University of Bristol
Bristol Uni student creates lockdown travel guide for UK tourists
A website providing information on travel abroad has been set up by a University of Bristol student, with help from his friends.
Lockdown Index has been created by Tom Marland, a Politics and International Relations student, with five friends. They made the site after trying to find somewhere to go on holiday but discovering information about travel online was difficult to find.
The website shows which countries have open, closed and restricted borders, the current status of airports, bars, restaurants and nightclubs and rules on each country’s coronavirus quarantining and testing.
“When we realised that there was no central place online with all the information on the latest travel guidance, we thought ‘why not do it ourselves?’,” says Tom, who is in his third year at the University of Bristol.
“We also knew that while the government allows holidaymakers to return home without quarantining, lots of destinations have measures in place on arrival for UK tourists.”
Thomas Marland created the website with the help of five friends
To create Lockdown Index, each member of the group researched between 30 and 40 countries, using government, foreign offices, embassy websites and each country’s national newspapers.
The website has already had more than 30,000 visits.
Tom says that creating the website has been a “really rewarding” experience, and that the group are hoping to create a version of the website for travellers in the USA and EU using new funding.
Tom, who hopes to study abroad in Copenhagen in September, says: “Lockdown has been a difficult time for so many of us, so it’s brilliant that we’ve been able to create something that helps people navigate the constantly changing rules and restrictions.”
All images: University of Bristol
Read more: Be a tourist in your own city
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