I came to the ABTA Convention hoping to pick up half a dozen ideas or so that would help me improve in my job.
Unfortunately I feel that, in the final analysis, I’ve only really come away with one idea.
I’m going to keep it to myself but will reveals that it was from the session which dealt with consumers.
This conference has been focused very much on travel agents. Of course, it is good that they are here but we also need to look hard at other parts of the industry.
A lot of the sessions were for agents but they have their own agenda at the conference and some of them weren’t even in the sessions which were most relevant to them.
Generally speaking, the conference did leave a lot to be desired. The airline session on the last morning led to the first really interesting debate.
There was no-one representing the consumer on stage and that was wrong.
Everyone needs to be more customer-focused and we should have had more input from consumers and consumer groups.
Everyone thinks they know what holidaymakers want but it is difficult to know the finer points of what we should be offering them.
The conference should also have taken a broader view. Perhaps someone with proven experience in e-commerce and retailers from other markets should have addressed us.
The sessions were also too internally focused. The reality now is that the big guys have specialist operations and there is a lot of similarity between what they do and what some of the smaller operators do.
Every time you have a conference, you have to reassess what went right and what went wrong.
There needs to be a questionnaire going out to everyone to get their views and the whole process should be pulled apart and dissected.
For the past couple of years, we’ve had Alastair Stewart moderating and he’s done a very professional job but perhaps now is the time to also look at whether that format needs changing. We are all lucky to be able to come to somewhere as fabulous as Australia. The organisation of the conference and some of the social events have been excellent but it’s just a shame the business sessions didn’t live up to the rest of the conference.
ABTA still has an important role in the industry but it needs to sit down and have a rethink if it is going to keep the conference as the premier event in the travel industry’s calendar.