The UK’s travel industry is uniting today in a coordinated Travel Day of Action to lobby Government for the safe and swift return of international travel as businesses battle for survival.
Spearheaded by the Save Future Travel coalition whose 12 members include ABTA, the Business Travel Association, Advantage Travel Partnership and the Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association, events are taking place around the country – and across social media channels – including gatherings at Westminster, Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff, as well as activities at a range of UK airports and meetings with local MPs.
ABTA expects “thousands” of participants across the events to “speak up for travel” and put pressure on the Government to capitalise on the UK’s successful vaccine rollout.
Campaigners are calling on the Government specifically to:
• Allow international travel to return safely and in a risk-managed way by properly implementing the Global Travel Taskforce’s plan for a traffic-light system, by expanding the green list in line with the evidence and making restrictions more proportionate, whilst keeping a strong red list to guard against variants. Government should also capitalise on the success of the vaccine rollout by removing testing and quarantine requirements for fully vaccinated individuals travelling from green and amber countries.
• Bring forward a package of tailored financial support, including extension of furlough support until April 2022, recognising that the travel sector’s ability to trade and generate income is much slower than first anticipated and more gradual than for businesses in the domestic economy.
The Government is expected to issue its next review of the traffic light system and travel restrictions by 28 June.
“The industry says the government has failed to deliver a restart to international travel as promised, by undermining the risk-based system Ministers established for a safe return to travel. In contrast, other countries are forging ahead with pragmatic, risk-based schemes that allow safe travel including most recently Germany, France and Spain,” said a statement from ABTA.
“While other sectors have received tailored support, such as grant schemes, the story is quite different for travel, with many travel businesses excluded from the general grant support available and others only able to access the bare minimum. Airlines and airports, meanwhile, have taken on billions of pounds of debt – raised privately and through Government loans schemes – that will have to be paid back,” added ABTA.
At its Travel Matters virtual conference yesterday, ABTA chief executive Mark Tanzer said the pandemic has destroyed finances and customer confidence, warning “the wolves are at the door”.
Tim Alderslade, CEO of Airlines UK, added: “Airlines are at the absolute limit of what they can borrow and without a genuine reopening this summer they will require Government support to survive. The best way to save UK aviation is to enable a return to the skies – safely – by taking advantage of our vaccine dividend and allowing fully vaccinated passengers to travel without restrictions from amber and green countries. This is now happening across much of Europe and the UK is in grave danger of needlessly falling behind.”
Meanwhile, the World Travel & Tourism Council has written to Prime Minister Boris Johson warning of a potential £639 million daily loss to the economy while international travel remains largely grounded.
Jason Geall, SVP and regional GM, EMEA at American Express Global Business Travel, believes that with the UK’s vaccination rate and track and trace technology “there is no reason why the UK cannot act”.
“Every day the Government fails to act, we risk falling even further behind the EU, which is beginning to safely resume travel with its key trading partners. The hundreds of thousands of UK jobs dependent on the travel industry, and the wider economic recovery, cannot afford to wait,” said Geall.
Abby Penston, chief executive of the Focus Travel Partnership whose membership comprises SME business travel agencies, said the Travel Day of Action is “about speaking up for an industry that, just when green shoots begin to appear, has been repeatedly prevented from trading effectively. There has been a lack of clarity behind the decision-making for re-opening travel, especially during the past few months.”
Penston says members’ revenues have collapsed by 84 per cent over the duration of the pandemic, ticket sales have dropped 75 per cent, and employment figures have fallen “dramatically”.
And in a new guest column published today by BTN Europe, BTA chief executive Clive Wratten says the business travel sector has slashed numbers "to the bare minimum and beyond".
He continues: "We have lost more than 50 per cent of our workforce,
and we desperately need to keep those skilled people that remain if we
are to return to travel at any scale."