I of course am an advocate of anyone taking the opportunity to work in travel as I have done both in the UK and overseas for over 22 years.  Last week I had a great opportunity of working with some of the staff from Worcester College of Technology who have a travel implant agency Spires Travel in the college. 42 students and 3 staff members had 5 days in the Costa del Sol to experience the life overseas first hand. It was hard work and with curfews in place the students were on their best behaviour and at least 15 of them will eventually become overseas reps; some already have placements, or cabin crew or travel agents. The course is excellent and well managed by a team of very knowledgeable staff, Bridget, Martin and Jane who were on hand for the students and worked them hard on the trip!

Courses like this are vital and it was so good to see a new wave of young enthusiastic people who may be the captains of the travel industry of the future – lets face it if you look round now most of the high profile people in our travel have came from  the overseas background.

It is great that there are now courses for this and that young people are being taught the value of working overseas and how much responsibility goes with it, however where does that responsibility start and end?

Being a father of a my young daughter Amelia I find the deaths of the two young children in Corfu 3 years ago Robert and Christianne tragic and I cannot even begin to feel the grief that the parents must be feeling. Things do need to be reviewed, laws tightened to ensure that this never happens ever again, and somebody needs to be accountable – however should this be the hotel who had qualified maintenance staff and on site inspections – or two young holiday reps who were asked to complete standard company heath and safety checks?

Nicola Gibson and Richard Carson are on trial with ten Greek nationals for the deaths of Robert and Christianne. The trial has been postponed several times however goes ahead tomorrow 17^th February and hopefully common sense will prevail on accountability.

Anyone starting out in a career in travel should always know how tough it is at the sharp end and that they have a huge responsibility, however on this occasion the buck needs to stop with the hotel owners and management and not two young holiday reps completely untrained in gas maintenance.

I do hope that Nicola and Richard can be exonerated and pick up their lives and careers and not be made to be scapegoats in all of this. It also needs to be clear from the tour operator and the Package Travel Regulations as to who ultimately has responsibility for what – and what the repercussions are when you put your name to any document – health and safety check or otherwise.

The tragedy of all this is a young family torn apart and the terrible loss of young life and that ultimately even more vigorous controls and checks are in place so that this can and never will happen again.