Lord Norman Fowler was one of the big political beasts in the first Thatcher Tory government of the 1980s.
Now, having taken his place in the House of Lords, the big game he’s as likely to encounter is in the game reserves of Africa, which he has visited on holiday for the past four years.
Together with fellow Tory heavyweights Ken Clarke and Leon Brittan, plus their wives, Fowler has enjoyed trips to Botswana, South Africa, Gabon and Kenya.
It was on these trips that Fowler said he saw for himself the value of international tourism, something he now works to promote as a non-executive director of Abta.
“Travel is so worthwhile. About one-tenth of the Kenyan economy is tourism, so we are creating vital jobs in countries that are developing,” he said.
However, Fowler believes tourism should be taken more seriously by the UK government because it creates jobs here as well as overseas.
When he was secretary of state for employment, he had tourism in his portfolio with its own minister, something he said was established by his predecessor David Young.
“He recognised that the tourist industry was responsible for a great number of jobs and was one of the areas of real job creation,” said Fowler.
“What followed from that was that we had a tourism minister directly under the secretary of state; I thought that worked rather well.”
Fowler was consulted by Abta as it drafted its first political manifesto, which was sent to the House of Lords this week. Among its key demands is a call for the creation of a dedicated tourism minister.
One of the criticisms of government is that it favours inbound tourism because it feels the outbound sector takes money out of the country. But Fowler said he saw no reason to distinguish between the two.
“In regions of the UK where jobs are difficult to get, you have this demand for overseas travel and you need people to deal with that demand.
“You have an industry which is not only providing jobs but doing so all around the country, which is unusual.”
There have been recent calls for a rival lobbying group to Abta from some independent agents. As a minister, Fowler said he preferred to deal with a single trade association.
“I was always impressed by associations like Abta that had authority, knowledge and experience,” he said.
“You would go to them not necessarily because you would agree with everything they were putting forward but you realised they were organisations who you should respect.”
Fowler said it was not a problem for an industry to have more than one lobbying voice, as long as they were saying the same thing.
But he added: “It’s obviously much stronger if you have got one or two organisations putting the case, rather than a range of organisations.
“It’s always bad news for an industry to be divided.”
Doubts have been raised about whether Abta can be that unifying voice while juggling its potentially contradictory roles as consumer champion and trade association.
But Fowler pointed out that the National House Building Council, of which he is a former chairman, was able “to give guarantees to the public while also providing services for its members”.
It was offering that sort of assurance to the general public that, he said, remained one of Abta’s key strengths.
It is the kind of assurance he said he seeks when booking his safaris through a reputable tour operator, not willing to risk organising them himself.