Changes to Data Protection regulations and credit card fees will be key issues debated at Elite Travel Group’s 40th anniversary conference.
The group is holding its 2017 conference this weekend in Majorca, which will this year include fun and ‘looking back’ sessions to mark the consortium’s 40th birthday.
The consortium was originally set up for agents in the Midlands in 1977 and was known as Midconsort Travel Group.
For the last decade it has worked closely with Advantage Travel Partnership. It has a solid core of 45 members, with 60 agency branches.
The group’s largest member, Carrick Travel, is sending 14 delegates to this year’s conference.
Chief executive, Neil Basnett, said: “We are a small consortium, we always have been, and yet here we are 40 years on, still here and fighting. We are proud that we are still fiercely independent.”
A topical panel session called ‘Travel Natters’ at this year’s conference was due to include Monarch Travel Group head of trade sales Simon Garrido. Following the group’s collapse, Beachcomber UK sales manager Sarah Archer is replacing Garrido on the panel.
Also on the panel is Simon Bunce, director of legal affairs, Abta and Sue Foxall, managing director, Kinver Travel Centre. Agents will be encouraged to join in a question and answer session.
Basnett said: “Changes to the regulations of Credit card fees and data protection are issues members want to talk about.”
To fit in with the 40th anniversary theme, long-standing Elite member, former chairman and director Alan Oram, of The Travel Shop, will look back at the group’s history.
Light-hearted sessions will include a presentation on the last 40 years of holidays and TV travel shows by John Carter, former presenter on BBC’s Holiday programme and ITV’s Wish You Were Here; an afternoon quiz called ‘So you think you know about travel?’; a talk by adventurer, film maker and motivational speaker Dave Cornthwaite; and two sessions by mind reader Graham Jolley.
Around 140 delegates are expected at the conference, moderated by radio and TV broadcaster Stuart Linnell.