The travel industry needs to develop a stronger united voice to lobby in times of crisis, according to experts speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast.
Paul Charles, chief executive of The PC Agency, said the government had a “very narrow viewpoint of who it thinks the travel industry is”, making it hard to get the sector’s messages through.
Charles, who has spearheaded the Quash Quarantine collective of more than 500 travel and hospitality firms, said: “We’re all united for perhaps the first time in a long time but it’s a really sad indictment of the political system that the government thinks our industry is just a few airlines and airports.
“I’m not saying these aren’t important groups. But the government has a very traditional civil service mentality way of negotiating. And when they invite people to discuss roundtable issues, as Priti Patel did last week, she had a very narrow group in there, rather than the broad range that’s represented here, in the Quash Quarantine campaign.”
Asked if a new single body was needed to lobby in a crisis on behalf of the entire travel industry, Charles added: “That’s certainly the learning that we’ve got from this group of over 500 supporters and companies who backed Quash Quarantine – from large to small, from individuals to companies. There is a need for it. And that’s certainly something that we’re discussing as a group. I think there needs to be a more powerful united front.
“There are brilliant groups out there. Everybody’s doing a good job in their own way. But it’s a bit confusing, and I think maybe that’s where the government has got confused in the whole quarantine debate.”
Advantage Travel Partnership chief executive Julia Lo Bue-Said said: “We’ve written to government ministers, we’ve written to shadow ministers and we’ve written to the transport secretary. We don’t have a tourism minister so whose ear should we be bending? We’re bending a lot of ears – all of us – collectively on this, and what I really cannot understand is why, given we are all on the same page; for the first time, the industry is all saying the same thing, so why is there no cut through?
“Is the political agenda so motivationally-charged around Brexit, that it’s creating this real blockage to us getting that message across, which actually is very straightforward message. It’s not complicated at all.”
Love To Travel owner and SPAA president Joanne Dooey said: “People are very angry that the government is pushing this blanket quarantine and not letting them have the choice. We are now used to social distancing and wearing masks in public, so let people have the choice to travel with vigilance if they want.”
She added: “Let’s hope that we can get it changed quickly and not wait two, three weeks because people need the security to book just now; they want the confidence to. We are doing our best as an industry to get that confident message out there in every way we can, but we need something from the government.”