The recently-appointed president of the Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association (SPAA) has said calling for a dedicated minister for both outbound and inbound travel to be installed in Westminster would be a priority of his during his two-year term.
Mike Tibbert, general manager, Europe, Global Marine Travel, was speaking to Travel Weekly ahead of the organisation’s annual dinner in Glasgow on Thursday night (February 24), when he warned the industry is at a ‘crossroads’.
He said having a minister representing the both the outbound and inbound travel industries was “very high up” the trade body’s agenda and it would increasingly push for one under his leadership.
However, he accepted the difficulty in convincing the UK government to add a separate minister for outbound travel when the Department for Transport (DfT) has an aviation and maritime minister, Robert Courts, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has a minister for tourism, Nigel Huddleston.
Tibbert suggested a new outbound travel minister should help address concerns cited by various travel associations, including Abta, Airlines UK and the Business Travel Association, as well as the SPAA.
“We certainly felt that the outbound travel industry was neglected throughout the pandemic,” he told Travel Weekly. “We’re shouting loud and clear that we cannot have an inbound industry without an outbound industry.
He said both the Scottish and UK governments were guilty of this misjudgement believing “inbound is worth billions”, but “do not perceive outbound as being equally important.”
“We’ve had a number of meetings and we have raised this point,” he said. “Is this the moment for governments to seize and recognise the travel industry as a whole, encompassing both inbound and outbound travel under one specific minister or department rather than the disjointed approach?”
While there has been “no tangible discussion and no movement forward” about creating such a ministerial role, Tibbert said: “They [UK government] have acknowledged that it might be a possibility.”
“We shall certainly keep pushing and do all that we possibly can within those two years to make it happen. If not, we’ll certainly conclude at the end of it that we made ourselves loud and clear and they’ve heard the message.”
Tibbert said his main priority as president is to get every SPAA member “back trading” to meaningful levels.
“[Our members] are all trading but they are not trading to the level that’s required to run a business,” he said. “To run a business you have to cover your current overheads and money to invest in the future: technology, staffing, marketing and advertising.
“At the moment a lot of agencies are marking time but hopefully in 2022 we should see a road to recovery.
“Unfortunately, it’s one step forward, two steps back. The most recent example is the crisis in Ukraine. What that does is undermine public confidence to travel. That may be just from a safety perspective.
“It’s going to take a bit longer to get public confidence up.”