British travellers heading to the Continent for the early-summer getaway are facing the first real-world test of the European Union’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) – and the results have been messy. Reports from six of the UK’s favourite holiday gateways – Rome Fiumicino, Palma de Mallorca, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Paris Charles-de-Gaulle and Barcelona – describe queues of up to three hours at the non-EU lanes, with dozens of passengers missing their flights home or onward rail connections. EES, which went live for air travel on 15 April, requires all “third-country” nationals, including Britons, to provide facial images and four fingerprints the first time they enter the Schengen Area. Kiosks and staffed booths have struggled to cope with peak-time volumes, and airports have been slow to redeploy staff from the now-redundant passport-stamping desks. The disruption is creating headaches for UK-based corporates that rely on fast, low-cost hops to European hubs. Travel managers at several multinationals told Global Mobility News they are revising door-to-door journey time assumptions and instructing travellers to build an extra 90-120 minutes into every outbound leg. Missed flights cascade into missed client meetings and penalty fees to re-issue tickets, costs that ultimately land on project budgets.
![EU Entry/Exit System triggers hours-long queues for UK holidaymakers]()
Amid the confusion, services like VisaHQ can shoulder much of the paperwork burden. The company tracks EES and the upcoming ETIAS in real time and provides UK travellers—both holidaymakers and corporate road warriors—with clear, step-by-step guidance, document checks and, where possible, fast-track appointment scheduling. A regularly updated dashboard for British passport holders is available at https://www.visahq.com/united-kingdom/ turning what could be hours of research across multiple government sites into a single, concise reference point.
Greece has acted unilaterally, announcing on 19 April that British passport holders flying direct to Athens or Thessaloniki will be ushered through a “non-biometric” lane until at least September, a move aimed at protecting its crucial UK tourist market. Other Mediterranean countries are under pressure from airlines and hoteliers to copy the exemption, but so far only Italy has hinted at a partial rollout during the peak August rush. For UK businesses the lesson is clear: EES is here to stay and the bedding-in period could last all summer. Employers should brief staff on the new process, ensure passports have at least two blank pages for physical back-up stamps if machines fail, and purchase flexible fares where possible. Organisations that regularly send technicians on 24- or 48-hour call-outs should consider splitting teams so that at least one engineer remains in-country to absorb schedule slips. Looking further ahead, corporate mobility teams will need to factor EES delays into 2027 budgets, because the separate ETIAS pre-travel authorisation is now pencilled in for late-2026, adding another administrative layer. A digital border promises greater security, but in the short term the price is lost productivity and traveller frustration.
Amid the confusion, services like VisaHQ can shoulder much of the paperwork burden. The company tracks EES and the upcoming ETIAS in real time and provides UK travellers—both holidaymakers and corporate road warriors—with clear, step-by-step guidance, document checks and, where possible, fast-track appointment scheduling. A regularly updated dashboard for British passport holders is available at https://www.visahq.com/united-kingdom/ turning what could be hours of research across multiple government sites into a single, concise reference point.
Greece has acted unilaterally, announcing on 19 April that British passport holders flying direct to Athens or Thessaloniki will be ushered through a “non-biometric” lane until at least September, a move aimed at protecting its crucial UK tourist market. Other Mediterranean countries are under pressure from airlines and hoteliers to copy the exemption, but so far only Italy has hinted at a partial rollout during the peak August rush. For UK businesses the lesson is clear: EES is here to stay and the bedding-in period could last all summer. Employers should brief staff on the new process, ensure passports have at least two blank pages for physical back-up stamps if machines fail, and purchase flexible fares where possible. Organisations that regularly send technicians on 24- or 48-hour call-outs should consider splitting teams so that at least one engineer remains in-country to absorb schedule slips. Looking further ahead, corporate mobility teams will need to factor EES delays into 2027 budgets, because the separate ETIAS pre-travel authorisation is now pencilled in for late-2026, adding another administrative layer. A digital border promises greater security, but in the short term the price is lost productivity and traveller frustration.
