The Foreign Office dropped its advice against travelling to Dubai on Thursday, easing a warning that had hung over one of the Gulf’s biggest holiday destinations after the US and Iran reached an agreement to stop the war. The move means people travelling to the UAE will no longer risk invalidating their travel insurance.
The timing matters because more than 1.4 million Brits visited Dubai last year, and the warning had been feeding uncertainty for families and business travellers trying to book ahead. Thousands of Britons were left stranded in the Middle East when the conflict broke out, while airlines cut back or suspended services to major travel hubs across the region.
Mark Tanzer welcomed the change and said he expected a positive impact on travel to the region. He said it was the most important development for tourism to and through the Middle East in some time, and that people had been delaying their summer holiday bookings because they were waiting to see what happened with the conflict in the Middle East.
Even so, the Foreign Office did not give a clean bill of health. Its foreign travel advice page for the UAE still said the situation remains unpredictable and that attacks could resume at short notice, a reminder that the peace deal has reduced the risk without removing it. The page also said the US and Iran have announced a memorandum of understanding in relation to the conflict in the Middle East.
That caution leaves airlines and travellers in different places. Emirates has kept flying during the conflict, but Virgin Atlantic suspended flights until winter 2027 after the war started and said on Thursday that remained the case. British Airways said earlier in June that it would not resume flights to the UAE until October 2026, so the return to normal schedules is likely to lag well behind the travel advice change.
For now, the shift from warning to caution should help restore confidence for a destination that depends heavily on British visitors. The bigger question is how quickly carriers follow the Foreign Office and decide that the route can really come back to normal.
