Australian travel industry braces for ‘influx’ as royalists plan to attend Queen Elizabeth’s funeral

theguardian.com:

Australia’s travel industry says it is bracing for an “influx” of Australians deciding to travel to London to attend Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.

Guardian Australia understands the very few remaining Qantas seats from Australian capital cities to London have been quickly booked since the news of the Queen’s death. Peter Hosper, the commercial director of Travel Authority Group, said his agency was preparing for more inquiries on Monday.

David Goldman, the joint managing director at Goldman Travel in Bondi Junction, said he had received inquiries from Australians who wanted to be in London regardless of whether they had prior travel booked.

“People want to be there. They want to be connected,” Goldman said.

He said one of his clients had paid a “fairly significant” amount of money to bring forward the date of his travel from Australia to the UK to be able to attend the funeral.

Monarchist and politics student Alex Readman, 23, said he was among those Australians who wanted to go to London for the Queen’s funeral.

Being at Westminster Hall when the Queen was lying in state, he said, presented a chance to fulfil his wish “to have some sort of connection to her legacy”.

However, Readman said that, despite his deep respect for the Queen, the post-pandemic price of flights had proved prohibitive for his budget.

Readman said when he looked up flights to London before the pandemic they had been around $1,500 but the only flights he could find this weekend had a $5,000 price tag.

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Readman’s earliest memory of the Queen was writing her a letter, aged seven, expressing his concern about the Australian government’s response to the drought.

“I remember vividly