The industry needs to put its “positive pants on” to encourage holidaymakers to travel again this year.
That was the message from a trade panel on a Travel Weekly webcast following the addition of seven countries to the green list last week.
Miles Morgan Travel chairman Miles Morgan said the trade needed to have a positive mindset and work hard to give clients confidence and inspire them to book holidays.
He said: “We need to get our positive pants on and sell more holidays late.”
He admitted this also meant working harder to give travel agency staff more confidence in selling holidays in the current environment.
He added: “We had a face-to-face managers’ meeting and we gleaned that despite having an experienced team there was a lack of confidence about testing and the rules. Demystifying that could unlock that.”
Gold Medal managing director Lisa McAuley said there was no point waiting for the government to put out a message to tell consumers it was now safe to travel.
“I don’t think the government will ever come out and say that. We need to put more positive messages out there. We should be more vocal,” she said.
Once consumers have taken one trip, they will realise the reality is far easier than perception of travelling currently, she added. “It’s not as onerous as people think,” she said.
Caribtours managing director Paul Cleary agreed the “reality is it’s nowhere near as bad as it looks” but said it was hard to overcome the perception that going on holiday was now a “faff”. “The faff is in people’s heads and it’s hard to overcome,” he said.
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