Renowned Mondial Travel owner Susan Downie is a guest writer for Nub News.

The boss of an acclaimed travel business in Hitchin offers some excellent advice for those planning a sunny break at any stage during 2023.

Are you thinking ahead to this year's travel plans and dreaming of that sunny beach break to Greece, Spain, Cyprus or the Canary Islands, writes Susan Downie, owner of Hitchin's Mondial Travel.

If you are, at some point you'll dig out your passport and check the expiry dates. 

If they don't expire until after your intended date of travel, great, no need to worry – right?  Well maybe, but you need to check both the expiry date and the issue date of your passport.

This is because the passport rules for non-EU nationals travelling in the EU changed from 1 January 2021, when the transition period for leaving the EU ended. This means that if you hold a British passport, you will be affected by these changes. 

If you are planning to travel to an EU country (except Ireland) or to Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino or Vatican City, the rules state that your passport must be valid for at least 3 months after the day you plan to leave the country, so you need to check the expiry date. This won't be news for most people.

The reason this could be problematic is that, before 2018, extra months were often added to UK passports if they were renewed well before their expiry date. 

These extra months will no longer be valid for entry into EU countries if that would mean that you are entering the country more than 10 years from the date of issue of your passport. 

At Mondial Travel, we know that many people are not aware of this as we are often advising our customers about passport expiry dates for EU travel. In some cases, this could be well before the expiry date printed on someone's passport.  

It isn't known how many UK passport holders are affected by these changes. However, as this potentially affects anyone whose passport was issued between 2013 and 2018, huge numbers of people could be affected. 

There have been reports of people being turned away at airports because their passports are not valid for travel although, if true, we assume these are travellers who did not book through a travel agent who would have picked this up! 

So, check your passport expiry date and your passport issue date. Better still, book through a travel agent who will guide you through such pitfalls!

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