Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has confirmed that all 11 countries on the red travel list will be removed at 4am on Wednesday.
Other travel restrictions remain in place, he said, but testing measures will be reviewed in the first week of January.
In a Tweet, Mr Shapps added: “As always, we keep all our travel measures under review and we may impose new restrictions should there be a need to do so to protect public health.”
The red list was only reintroduced on 26 November following the emergence of the Omicron variant in South Africa. Over the next few days a total of 11 countries, all in Africa, were placed on the list but Health Secretary Sajid Javid said there was no longer any benefit of forcing arrivals from these destinations into mandatory hotel quarantine since the Omicron variant has now spread around the world.
However, Advantage Julia Lo Bue-Said said: “Yet again we are back to yo-yo decision making from the government, with all 11 countries now being removed from the red list just a few weeks after they were introduced. This causes significant disruption for the travel industry and the hardworking travel agents who spent days unravelling bookings and rebooking planned trips.
“We also need to consider the impact these changes have on consumer confidence, combined with the stringent testing measures that are in place, which act as a significant and costly barrier to travel. What we really need is for the government to stick to a process and make rational and reasonable responses based on the data available to them rather than suppressing demand for an already fragile economic sector.”