Exactly 10 years ago I was preparing to appear live on the BBC’s consumer show Watchdog to reassure travellers that ABTA and the industry had done everything possible to prevent problems from the dreaded millennium bug.
Anne Robinson challenged me live in the studio and said: “If you’re so sure everything will be OK will you come back here on January 4 to answer people’s complaints?”. I agreed without hesitation. Needless to say there were no problems, and the BBC never mentioned it again.
So it was a good start to a decade that was to be challenging for everyone in so many ways. Recessions are always tough, but in any economy there are ups and downs, and most businesses are prepared for these. What we were not prepared for was global terrorism.
The attacks on September 11 2001 were to change the way all of us travel – perhaps for ever. I look back with pride at the way agents and operators worked together to help customers whose travel plans were disrupted.
The role of me and my team was to advise people on what was happening. The following day I was at Heathrow giving back-to-back interviews on all the TV breakfast shows. We estimated that 25 million people were watching – so it was a very effective way to keep people informed.
The other big challenge was the unpredictability of 1990s weather. We had it all – hurricanes in the Caribbean, avalanches in the French Alps, floods in the UK – and let’s not forget what unexpected snow does to knock things off course.
Perhaps the other negative development of the decade was the speed with which fraudsters could steal money from a business or its customers. This really has made us all think differently about how money needs to be protected from the activities of these people. ABTA’s solution – to reduce customer protection – was one that I just did not feel comfortable with, and so I wished them well and decided to move on to pastures new.
Now I direct public relations activity for TTA, Worldchoice, MacIntyre Hudson and a number of other clients, and I still appear on TV – although far less frequently. In between moderating conferences and training people to deal with the media or speak in public, I find more time to go birdwatching in remote parts of the world. At the start of the decade I had seen just over 2,500 species, and now I have seen nearly 6,000. I know that sounds impressive, but there are still 4,000 birds that I haven’t seen. My next destination is Colombia.
by Keith Betton, Keith Betton Consulting and former head of communications at ABTA