Interview: Abta chief explains rationale for upbeat Travel Convention theme

Abta confirmed the theme for its 2025 Travel Convention in Calvià, Majorca, as ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ in May, against a background of appalling suffering in Gaza, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, missile exchanges between India and Pakistan, and rising tension over US imposition of tariffs on trade.

Chief executive Mark Tanzer offers two key reasons in explanation, saying: “If you stack up all the challenges in the world, it’s easy to feel the picture is bleak.

“There is a lot of conflict and a political dynamic which is much more unilateral than multilateral in terms of tariffs and borders closing, plus we have the challenge of climate change and decarbonising. 

“If you look at it purely from a headline point of view, you might be depressed and think travel’s prospects aren’t good. But within some of the challenges there are ways that things might improve.”

As an example, he points to how the US threat to withdraw from Europe’s defence “has forced European countries to take a more realistic view of how Europeans are going to look after ourselves”, adding: “From a UK perspective, where Brexit pushed us away [from Europe], this sucks us back into the fact that we’re Europeans. We have a lot of shared interests and that starts with defence.”

He suggests the UK will “go into negotiations on a trade and cooperation agreement [with the EU] next year with a different view of what that collaboration could be like, so that what comes across as bad may cause a realignment that is good.”

Tanzer says: “There are other examples. I don’t think anybody looking at the temperatures in southern Europe now doubts climate change is real. It’s accelerating investment in carbon-reduction technologies and more‑efficient aircraft and so forth. So, there is a brighter side to some of the dark clouds.”

He also points to a “leadership phenomenon”, explaining: “We had a convention speaker a few years ago, Andrew St George, who had written a book on leadership in the Royal Navy, in which the core value of leadership is cheerfulness. You can imagine when things are bad at sea and there is no land in sight that you have to be optimistic.

“There is a motivational and leadership aspect to finding the bright side of things to help people through challenging times – without being a Pollyanna [persistently optimistic].”

Tanzer insists he won’t take to the convention stage to the sound of Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ 1979 song Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3, noting: “Most people in the audience won’t have heard of it.”

Similarly, despite this year marking Abta’s 75th anniversary, he says: “We don’t want to look backwards. We want to look forward to the next 75 years.”

For full details about The Travel Convention, and to register, visit the convention’s website