Aito members are being urged to meet their local MP to raise awareness of their travel business within the travel sector.
The Specialist Travel Association (Aito) industry affairs director Noel Josephides said the recently-formed alliance with Advantage Travel Partnership aimed to lobby on behalf of small and medium sized businesses, ideally for a minister in government and in addition for streamlined regulation across the sector.
Aito and Advantage have already jointly funded a public affairs agency to “get in front of the right people” in government, but speaking at the Aito Overseas Conference 2022 in Braga, Josephides called on members to play their part by raising their business profile with local MPs.
“At the moment, we are lumped together with aviation [but] we are far divorced from the airlines and the likes of Jet2holidays and easyJet holidays,” he said.
In a plea directly to Aito members, he said: “We have got to get to our MPs – and we need your help.
“You have to visit them and get them to come to your offices, tell them how many staff you have.
“Get together with others in the community and make a combined approach to educate these people in exactly the problems we have and why we exist and how much we contribute to the UK economy.
“It will make an enormous difference to our ability to influence government and to explain what government does.”
Advantage chief executive Julia Lo Bue-Said told the Aito conference that the alliance had already set out its “key asks” of government as part of its lobbying on behalf of the outbound travel industry.
“The next step is how we take that to government through the different channels,” she said.
She added the alliance was committed to raising awareness of the sector by “banging doors down” to get “as much visibility as the inbound and domestic travel markets”.
She stressed: “Our end goal is to influence and change [government] policy. It’s going to take a long time. We need to engage with government at the right level and keep that narrative about outbound travel at the right level
“It’s easy to get downbeat as an industry but we are not moaning. Let’s focus on the opportunities, particularly around regulation and minimising different travel industry regulations which currently all come under different government departments.”