A YORK minibus firm has seen 31 bookings cancelled as a result of the coronavirus.

Steve Harris, boss of Anytime Travel, said the cancellations all came in last week, often involving trips to and from airports.

They included foreign students from countries including Spain, Norway and Saudi Arabia.

One person emailed to say: “The group will not be coming as Spain has banned all school trips for the rest of the year.”

Another said: “Norway is going to stop flights, etc very soon and put itself into isolation. All people returning to Norway from now on have to self isolate for two weeks.

“All school visits and theatre trips have been cancelled.”

A third said: “The Saudi Government have banned all travel for three months due to coronavirus situation.”

Steve said the loss of bookings would mean all staff having fewer jobs and a lower income, but it would become much worse if the Government decided to close schools, and Anytime could no longer provide transport for pupils at both state and private schools.

It would mean that the firm had lost about 70 per cent of all of its business.

He added that he had never experienced anything like this in all the years he had been running the firm, including the recession of 2008-10.