Travel Weekly Blog

Andy Cooper, director general of the Federation of Tour operators, came into tto TW Towers today to talk ABTA merger.

We managed to get a video clip of Andy talking through what the merger means for operators and agents.

Surprise, surprise, Andy said the move was not motivated by financial considerations, which is exactly what TW's Ian Taylor highlighted in his analysis as being a reason for it.

Martin Couzins, online editor

Congrats to ABTA for being named a business superbrand in a poll of leading business brands.

ABTA demonstrated quality, reliability and distinction, according to the judges - exactly what the UK travel trade needs from its representative body.

Martin Couzins, online editor

The Times has published a piece on the 13 best travel scams. There are some usual suspects in this list. Travel Weekly ran a Stamp out Fraud campaign with ABTA last year which highlighted the scale of the problem for travel professionals.

For example, in 2006 cardholder-not-present fraud rose by 16% to £212.6 million, while card fraud against the travel industry increased by £800,000 to £24.1 million.

Fraud is a big problem in the industry - both for consumers and travel companies.

Martin Couzins, online editor

Just had a chat with Andy Cooper at the Federation of Tour Operators and asked him when ABTA and the FTO will merge (I always ask when I see him). The answer: he batted away the question. He always does that. But he did liken the ABTA/FTO situation to a swingometer and this week it is pointing more towards a merger. Maybe we should start an ABTA/FTO merger-ometer.
Martin Couzins, online editor

Price transparency is a big issue in travel. More often than not, what you see is not what you get. I was at the Travolution Question Time event last night and one of the panel pointed out that trust in offline travel sales had been eroded because of confusion around pricing (not sure online is guilt free here).

This issue is picked up today by Darren at Travel Rants who is running a poll on booking terms and conditions. Be interesting to see the results, although I'm pretty sure which way it will go.

When the 2012 Olympics recently produced a new logo it did so - as you'll remember - cheaply and to much critical acclaim.

Not to be outdone, Abta, the travel association – nee Association of British Travel Agents - has rebranded itself too.

Chief executive Mark Tanzer told Travel Weekly that the identity reflected the organisational changes that have taken place at Newman Street.

We will have to wait and see what Abta members and travel professionals up and down the land think of the ‘refreshing and contemporary design’.

Meanwhile, we have a quiz. Can you guess how much Abta paid for the new look?

1. £30
2. £300
3. £3,000
4. £30,000
5. £300,000

First right answer in the comments section wins a bottle of wine...

Martin Couzins, online editor

The Civil Aviation Authority is asking for the trade's input on reform of ATOL bonding, which it proposes replacing with a £1-per-passenger levy.

We want to use this post as a forum for your comments.

Take a look at Ian Taylor's backgrounder in this week's Travel Weekly and the CAA's consultation document, then use the comments form to leave your feedback. For example:

• Do we need another consultation?
• Do the CAA's numbers add up?
• Would ATOL holders pass the cost on to the consumer? Who should pay?

Alternatively, email your ideas to travel.weekly@rbi.co.uk.

The Association of British Travel Agents has long been known by its acronymn ABTA, but this is soon to become official according to reports of changes apparently being proposed by the association’s board.

If the changes are given the go-ahead the association will become known simply as Abta, and, just as BAA lost any reference to airports when it ditched the longhand version of its name, will cease to refer directly to travel agents.

But this is just one of many changes the association is proposing, the most fundamental of which will see agent representation at board level significantly reduced as ABTA strives to transform itself into the association that represents the entire travel industry.

Other changes include opening up membership to airlines, ferry operators and accommodation-only suppliers.

Obviously, we're interested to hear what you think of all this:

• By trying to widen its remit does ABTA risk losing its identity, particularly the strong consumer recognition that many feel is its most valuable asset?
• Is it time for independent agents to find or create a representative body that will concentrate on their issues?
• Is ABTA risking alienating independent agents and undermining their reasons for paying subscription fees and bonding costs?

Leave a comment on this post, or email us if you'd like your comments to appear on next week's letters page.

Lee Hayhurst, acting news editor

Here I am being interviewed for ITV Wales current affairs programme Wales This Week for a feature which includes the failure of ABTA travel agency Mossley Travel.

The show is examining the business dealings of one of Mossley Travel’s former owners and includes details of the agency finances and 2003 failure.

I was asked to appear to clarify the role ABTA plays when one of its agency members ceases trading.

The show aired last night [Monday 11th December] at 8pm.

Paul Nelson, reporter

The travel industry needs to work harder at lobbying, according to a story that we recently carried on travelweekly.co.uk.

The Travel Weekly Blog can't help with that (at least not right now...) but here's a natty way of keeping up with travel-related speeches and debates in the Houses of Parliament.

Head to Theyworkforyou.com, a site which is designed to keep us in touch with what our MPs are up to. A noble enough goal in itself, but the site also features - here's the good bit - a keyword-driven email alert service.

That means you can sign up, register for keywords like 'travel' or 'tourism', and read what the Commons and the Lords are saying about the industry from the comfort of your inbox. It's free, and all you need to disclose is your email address.

We're going to sign up here and see how useful the service is, so look out for updates. If you try it too we'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Nathan Midgley, travelweekly.co.uk

Some interesting issues, which 18 months ago would never have existed here in the UK, have emerged in recent weeks, most notably at the recent European Tour Operators Association annual conference

UK tourism chiefs were unwittingly ambushed in their attempts to convince skeptical inbound operators and London hoteliers the 2012 Olympics isn’t going to harm their businesses.

VisitBritain chief executive Tom Wright started his speech by conceding they had concerns the Olympics would disrupt their operations by doubling hotel rates and scaring away tourist from the capital.

He ended by stating “the weeks of the Games will not be as detrimental as you all think”.

However, Wright was unaware all delegates were given data revealing that during the 2006 Football World Cup, German hotel occupancy levels fall by 3% with governing body FIFA returning more than one million blocked booked rooms for hoteliers to sell at the last minute.

Meanwhile, VisitLondon chief executive James Bidwell waxed lyrical about the need to tap into the emerging Chinese market, urging delegates to use Beijing’s handing over of the Olympic Torch at the end of the 2008 Games to entice visitors to London.

He even boasted London would hold Chinese Festivals to stimulate demand for the capital from China.

Had Bidwell stayed for the following presentation he would have heard Mintel researcher Macy Marvel dismiss the Chinese outbound tourism market as “overblown”.

The report – European Inbound Market Outlook - labels Chinese tourists as bargain basement travellers who are uninterested in Europe and its culture – 90% of them stay in Asia while those that do go to Europe look for room rates of 20 Euros per person per night.

Needless to say the delegates still needed convincing…

Paul Nelson, reporter

Someone in the industry remarked to me recently that talk of the environmental impact of air travel and tourism was just a fad.

Never mind the Stern Review, let’s hope to God they are right. It would be wonderful to find the threat of climate change had been exaggerated.

Tony Blair says the science is not in doubt, but after the Iraq war who can believe him? Unfortunately, the 2,000 leading climate scientists in the world, convened in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say the same thing.

A handful of lobbyists, politicians and PR executives, many of them funded by oil giant ExxonMobil, oppose the idea and seek equal media air time. Don’t be misled next time you see the likes of former chancellor Nigel Lawson on TV arguing against the science of climate change. Your children and grandchildren will live with the consequences.

I recommend those not convinced read The Last Generation, the latest book by New Scientist writer Fred Pearce. If you can get find a copy of his 1989 book Turning up the Heat, so much the better. Its prediction of how climate change would unfold through the past decade has proved frighteningly accurate.

Either Pearce is a regular Nostradamus or the science was pretty well understood in the late 1980s. Since then, scientists have developed their understanding and fleshed out the detail, and the predictions of how far and fast temperatures will rise have pushed higher.

Those who deny climate change would have you believe the phenomenon is still the subject of dispute. It is not. The debate is about the rate of temperature rise, and the consequences, during the lifetimes of those now living.

But like those in the tobacco industry who spent five decades denying the link between cigarettes and cancer, these people will not go away – they even employ some of the same tobacco lobbyists. The rest of us just have to get past them.

Where does that leave travel? God knows we all need our world to be sustainable. But tourism needs sustainability too. No one in the industry would suggest it despoil a destination and then move on, like strip mining.

There is a circle to be squared in reconciling constant growth with sustainability, but sooner or later the costs of maintaining what we have – or dealing with the consequences – will have to be factored into profit and loss figures, as former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern has concluded.

No company is going to commit commercial hara-kiri by cutting back a money-making business, so the industry will require regulation to ensure necessary adjustments impact equally on all.

But that would fly in the face of the deregulation that now dominates and require a global political U-turn of the kind that followed the Wall Street Crash or accompanied the build up and outbreak of World War Two.

Maybe deregulation will turn out to be the fad in the long term. What do you think?

Ian Taylor, aviation reporter

Busy couple of days here.

Last night we hosted a party in Central London to unveil the re-launched Travel Weekly magazine. Reaction has been overwhelmingly positive so far! [Lawrence Assock of Destination Care pictured]

Earlier today, Travel Weekly managing director Trevor Harding handed out copies of the new magazine here at Reed Business Information in Sutton.

All the frenetic activity of the past few months will continue next week at World Travel Market, where we will be out in force with a special stand at ExCel with our new TW Group colleagues, Travolution and Gazetteers Plus.

We will also have our famous WTM dailies, which will be circulated every single day of WTM.

Make sure you drop by to say hello during the course of the event, stand # 1700 in the South Hall.