Advantage Travel Partnership chief executive Julia Lo Bue-Said updated members on the consortium’s push to set up a new UK outbound travel lobby group, akin to UKhospitality, and achieve industry-wide support for the initiative, while warning it would require a significant investment of time and finances.
“To think we could carry on as we were before [the pandemic] is ludicrous,” said Lo Bue-Said. “We need a think tank or forum to truly represent the industry. We need to press a reset button, think about what we want and the image and profile of the sector. We must be laser-focused on making sure we can hold government to account.”
Airlines UK chief executive Tim Alderslade, who joined Lo Bue-Said for a panel discussion alongside Independent travel correspondent Simon Calder, said government still didn’t understand or appreciate the value of outbound travel.
“They see outbound as taking money out of the UK economy,” said Alderslade. “That’s a problem. The focus is always on inbound – how do we get people in. We’ve got to challenge that narrative.”
Alderslade also defended the actions of the Department for Transport during the pandemic, highlighting how a lot of challenging or unpopular travel policy was made centrally only for it to then be left to the DfT to disseminate it and take the flak.
“Another lesson [I learnt] is that the Treasury runs the country,” he said. “The Department for Transport was actually one of our biggest allies.”
Reflecting on what the industry could have done differently during Covid to secure a better outcome from government, Calder highlighted the lack of a unified message from travel during Travel Day of Action at Westminster last June.
“Everyone had different agendas – agents, cruise lines, airlines,” he said. “Everyone had their own idea of what they wanted to happen. There had to be a similar message, a vision everyone could have signed up to.”
While critical of government, running through the many issues it caused for the travel industry over the past two years, Calder said it was important to bear in mind the lack of precedence. “This was uncharted territory,” he said. “Government wasn’t intent on destroying travel, but it did everything it could to achieve that aim.”
He did, though, criticise the DfT for failing to stand up to the Foreign Office when it imposed advisories against all but essential travel to countries on Covid grounds, highlighting how Portugal last May – initially the only truly accessible green list destination – was quickly consigned to the red list again a matter of weeks later.
“The FCDO trashed its own reputation,” he said, branding its advisories “barmy” given they essentially put countries with elevated rates of Covid infection on-par with war zones and terror hotspots.
‘We must all admit change is needed’
Alderslade caused some consternation among delegates when discussing the many different relationships between the aviation sector and the travel trade, some mutually beneficial, others more distant. “There’s always going to be tension,” he said. “We [the airlines] need the business, but ideally, we want to sell it ourselves.”
Lo Bue-Said placated delegates by reiterating Advantage would continue to work closely with the aviation sector, stressing it was vital the trade “understood its motives and had a dialogue”.
She added the next objective for the Advantage-led outbound travel lobby was to “get to the point where we speak with one voice”. “It’s not my story, it’s about the industry believing in what it needs,” she said.
“People tell me we need to be a united voice. The reality, though, is that we are going to need funding. We are going to need people to admit change is needed. Everyone is going to have to out their hands in their pocket and work collectively.
“This is an industry collective, we [Advantage] have brought it to the table, but it is incumbent on everyone to support it now."
