East-based travel agent who has had to get a second job says business is "hanging by a thread."
She says the traffic light system should be scrapped as it's unsustainable for many working in the travel industry.
An East-based independent travel agent says the traffic light system should be scrapped as it's causing "total chaos" within the industry.
Today, Portugal has been moved from 'green' to 'amber', on the UK's travel list, meaning thousands of travellers have been rushing back to avoid having to quarantine when they return.
The decision to remove Portugal from the green list has been a controversial one - the announcement was made last Thursday, just 17 days after the ban on international leisure travel was lifted.
Julie Croucher is the owner of Travel With Jules, in Suffolk:
"We've had 15 months of constantly moving bookings, answering our client's questions trying to manage expectations.
"It's impossible because we're told one thing one day and it just changes again the next. It's just unsustainable you just can't carry on like that.
"It's mind-numbing, I can't begin to explain the stress, the tears the anxiety. My business really is hanging by a thread now."
Julie added:
"One thing that is certain is that my business and many others like it will not make it. We need help and we need it now.
"When they implemented these traffic lights, we asked them to give us plenty of notice if anything was moved between different lists, that it wouldn't be like last summer 'you can go one minute and you cant the next.' And they've done the same again - it's total chaos.
"Nothing has changed in 15 months it's got worse. I just don't know when the world will ever, if it will ever, open up again. And if something doesn't change in the next few weeks we're all going to fall off the edge of a cliff."
39 flights left from Faro Airport in the Algarve to the UK yesterday, almost double the usual total.
Travellers had to arrive back in the UK before 4am this morning to avoid self-isolating at home for 10 days.
The Department for Transport said they needed to take “swift action to protect the gains made with the vaccine rollout”. It’s after stating that 68 cases of the Indian variant had been identified in Portugal.
They added that the positivity rate for coronavirus tests in Portugal had nearly doubled since the travel lists were first created four weeks earlier.