Comment: Do conferences have a future without the big hitters in the bar?

Many, many years ago, when I started my career in travel and began to climb the greasy pole to hopeful career success, I attended my first overseas conference. It was an Abta conference in Palma, in the old conference centre overlooking the marina.

The entire great and good of the travel industry were in attendance and I was seeing and meeting all the big hitters for the first time. It was an unforgettable experience and I was in awe of these ‘names’ that I had only ever seen featured and quoted in the travel press – the industry A-listers.

The event was attended by more than 2,500 people, almost all of whom were either tour operators or travel agents. The banter was great and the bar conversations brilliant for picking up ideas from like?minded travel agents from all over the UK.

The landscape was very different back then, in the late 1980s. There were literally hundreds of one-off travel agents, many miniples and then the big guns, Lunn Poly, Pickfords and of course Thomas Cook. The tour operator world was similar, with not only the holiday giants like Thomson and Thomas Cook, but also numerous others such as Cosmos, Grecian, OSL and ILG – for a short period at least. These businesses all had structures of people, from MDs down to travel agents on the counters and reps in resorts. The industry was full of people at every level.

Different era

Back then, the Abta event was the only overseas conference of the year, with ITT only just starting its journey at the tail end of the decade. It was therefore the only chance to mingle and mix with each other on an annual basis and no one would dream of not attending, from the big cheeses downwards. If you were on the list to attend, you were chuffed (well, I was anyway!)

Fast-forward and the landscape could not be more different. Tour operator numbers and travel agent numbers mullered, many airlines putting direct business first with the only growth coming from online, which has few actual humans relative to its scale, and homeworking. At the same time, conferences have exploded in numbers. Abta and ITT are still going but have been joined by every consortium now holding one, as well as individual businesses and the likes of Clia and Atas, tour operators like Jet2 and the travel trade press.

It is therefore no surprise that attendance is not what it was, with the main two conferences both struggling to attract 500 visitors and hosting as many ‘sellers of products’ as actual travel people.

The struggle for attendees is down to both people and time. There are far fewer tour operators than there used to be, with on-the-road sales teams smaller too, and it’s the same story for travel agents. Add to this tighter budgets and the challenge is obvious to see.

Alternatives

Fewer people and more conferences – so what to do?

Should conferences be happy to welcome fewer delegates? Should we cut down on the number of conferences?

The reason many companies attend these events is to target agents and homeworkers – those on the frontline who sell and promote travel. With that in mind, the conferences run by the likes of Hays Travel, Travel Counsellors and Designer Travel are probably going to be more popular, with many trying to get to the frontline agent.

Reaching the big hitters of the industry is not so easy these days – the travel trade press seem to attract them for their one-day events, but the days of talking in the bar with these people is not as easy to achieve. That’s sad, because I found meeting the top bods, who would happily chat to you in a bar, highly motivating as I tried to build my travel career.

I certainly think things will have to change with conferences over the next few years. How it plays out will be interesting to see.