Advantage Travel Partnership boss Julia Lo Bue-Said will urge the industry to learn lessons from the pandemic and tell agents to seize a “unique opportunity” to lead the recovery at this year’s conference.
Speaking ahead of the consortium’s first in-person, overseas conference since 2019, to be held in Madeira this weekend, Lo Bue-Said stressed it was vital the sector changed its ways to protect itself from the next crisis.
She said: “What we have to be very careful of is that we don’t forget what we’ve just come out of and go back to normal. It’s important we learn from the last two years and start building for the future.
“For our members there is a unique opportunity to lead the recovery. There is a critical role for agents to play now.”
Lo Bue-Said will use the conference to hammer home the message the industry must adapt if it is to be taken more seriously by government in future.
“I will use the opportunity to reinforce the need for change and doing things differently in our sector,” she said, adding: “The industry needs to change to ensure it is in a better position for the next crisis . . . to lobby and reflect its image through government.”
She claimed the Advantage consortium had “truly understood how members have felt” during the past two years and had adapted the way it worked at head office level.
The decision to invite conference speakers such as Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, and Simon McNamara, Iata’s area manager for the UK and Ireland, demonstrated how the consortium had broadened its partnerships as a result of the pandemic and was taking a more “macro view” of the sector, added Lo Bue-Said.
“Our networking has grown and how we operate with different industry stakeholders has changed,” she said. “We have looked at the industry through a wider lens.”
As well as reflecting on the past two years, the conference will discuss travel trends and the consortium’s plan for the next three years, and give tips on how to make businesses more sustainable, market to a broader audience and improve mental health.