The government is “well aware” of the importance of outbound travel and “has no strategy” to boost the domestic sector at its expense, according to tourism minister Nigel Huddleston.
The government launched a Tourism Recovery Plan last month setting ambitious targets for restoring domestic and inbound tourism.
But Abta chief Mark Tanzer hit out at a reference in the plan to “embracing the opportunity” of restrictions on overseas travel, describing it as “a dagger in the heart of travel agents and tour operators”.
Huddleston, former Google travel industry head, told Travel Weekly: “My job as tourism minister is to get people to spend money in the UK.
“But I have great concern for what’s happening with outbound travel. I’m not blind to the fact that outbound travel employs over 100,000 people in the UK, [and] we know how important it is to get overseas travellers into the UK.
“I can tell you inbound travel gets a lot of airtime in government. There is no strategy to play off one part of the tourism sector against another.”
He insisted restrictions on travel are “an inevitable consequence of the actions we have to take”.
“Other countries are doing the same,” he said. “There are countries that have pretty much closed their borders. Look at Australia and New Zealand.
“I know there is cynicism out there, but it’s important we get all three strands of tourism going robustly – domestic, inbound and outbound.”
Huddleston argued: “I don’t control the levers for outbound. It’s not that I don’t care. The levers sit primarily with BEIS [the Department for Business] and the Department for Transport. I work closely with ministers who do control the levers because we want international travel to happen again.”
He pointed to increased coordination across government on all three sectors, saying: “I’m aware that one of the frustrations for the travel sector is that its touchpoints with government are multiple and fragmented.”
Culture secretary Oliver Dowden “will be leading regular cross-departmental meetings” as part of the Tourism Recovery Plan. Huddleston said: “These haven’t happened before. We’ve had a lot of informal connectivity within government, but a more formal structure is an important signal of the government’s commitment.
“We have to work closely with the DfT, BEIS, the Treasury and many other parts of government. To have this commitment from a secretary of state is pivotal.”
He insisted: “We’ve seen better cooperation between departments during Covid than before. I’m constantly talking to aviation minister Rob Courts about international travel and that is how we should be working.
“We don’t underestimate the importance of inbound or outbound. But I want to make sure that if people disappear back to the Med later this year or next, they have a second holiday or weekend trip in the UK.”