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* UK brings in 14-day quarantine for France, Netherlands,
Malta
* Airline and travel company shares fall
* France warns it will reciprocate
(Adds comments from UK holidaymakers, background)
By Alistair Smout and Tangi Salaün
LONDON/RESSONS-SUR-MATZ, France, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Britons
rushed to get back from summer holidays in France on Friday
after their government said it would soon impose a 14-day
quarantine on travellers from across the Channel due to rising
coronavirus infections.
Britain's government announced late on Thursday that it
would impose a quarantine from 0300 GMT on Saturday on arrivals
from France, giving an estimated 160,000 UK holidaymakers there
just over 24 hours to try to get home to avoid isolating.
The sudden rule change dealt a fresh blow to tourists,
airlines and tour operators all hoping for holidays after the
pandemic, which has left many travel groups cash-strapped and
facing an uncertain future.
Many British tourists headed towards the French port of
Calais hoping to catch a ferry or a shuttle train home in time.
"We've changed our plans when we heard the news last night.
We decided to head back home a day early to miss the
quarantine," one British woman at a service station on the
motorway to Calais told Reuters.
During their week's camping holiday in the south of France,
her family had met fewer people than on a typical day in their
hometown of Guildford, southern England, she added.
The new quarantine rules apply to France, the second most
popular holiday destination for Britons, the Netherlands and the
Mediterranean island of Malta, transport minister Grant Shapps
said.
Spain, the favourite holiday destination for Britons, came
under British government quarantine rules on July 26.
France warned it would reciprocate, causing further
headaches for airlines which might have to cancel yet more
flights, meaning fresh financial pain and denying them the
August recovery for which they'd hoped.
Airline and travel shares tumbled. British Airways-owner IAG
was down 6% and easyJet, which said it would
operate its full schedule for the coming days, fell 7%.
TIGHTENING QUARANTINE
When Europe first went into lockdown in March, Britain was
criticised for not restricting arrivals from abroad. But since
June, it has introduced strict quarantine rules for arrivals
from countries with infection rates above a certain level.
The tightening quarantine for foreign travel, however,
contrasts with the easing of rules at home, where Prime Minister
Boris Johnson has ordered the reopening of the economy to
resume, weeks after pausing it.
Shapps denied that the policies were contradictory, saying
that the aim was to keep the reproduction rate of infection
under one.
"Being able to open up some of those things but having to
close down travel corridors elsewhere is all part of the same
thing," he told BBC Radio.
Shapps said he sympathised with travellers but that they
should not be entirely surprised, given the fluid situation
around the pandemic.
"Where we see countries breach a certain level of cases ...
then we have no real choice but to act," he told Sky News.
He ruled out any special assistance for holidaymakers,
saying they knew the risks before travelling, with a possible
quarantine to France having been rumoured for weeks.
Airlines UK, an industry body representing BA, easyJet and
Ryanair, called on Britain to implement more targeted
quarantines on the regions with the highest infection rates and
to bring in a testing regime.
An EU study showed that imported cases of COVID typically
only account for a small share of infections when a pandemic is
at its peak, but are more significant once a country has the
disease under control.
(Writing by Sarah Young, additional reporting by David
Milliken, editing by Nick Macfie)
