Nine UK associations with more than 7,000 member companies combined – including Pata UK & Ireland – have today officially launched the Travel Industry Alliance (TIA). The Alliance brings together associations representing travel, tourism and aviation sectors, both inbound and outbound, leisure and business. Key aims of the Alliance will be to engage with government on issues of the day and allow peer group sharing and discussion on their specific sectors.
Participating associations in the Travel Industry Alliance (TIA) include:
- AITO (The Specialist Travel Association) ATTA® (African Travel and Tourism Association) BAR UK (Board of Airline Representatives) BTA (The Business Travel Association)
- CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association)
- CTO (Caribbean Tourism Organisation – UK & Europe Chapter)
- LATA (Latin American Travel Association)
- PATA UK & Ireland Chapter (Pacific Asia Travel Association)
- UKinbound
TIA Aims
The TIA has two initial and immediate objectives in mind which focus on travel safely restarting. The TIA will seek to collaborate with government departments to:
- Encourage the FCDO to pull back from issuing advisories due to Covid-19 and become a purely informational source
- Enable travellers to access the UK without any quarantine, at the earliest opportunity, whether through pre-departure testing, test and release, or some other measure that helps restart travel.
Danny Callaghan, Co-Chairman of the TIA and CEO of LATA said: “Trade and consumers need to make informed decisions about where they can go rather than being effectively banned. The current FCDO advice is rather moot in most cases anyway because countries with Covid-19 problems will close their borders, making destination availability almost self-regulating.”
“As an industry, we safely manage travel for millions of customers every year and, whilst Covid-19 poses slightly different challenges, the principles are the same, and if we are allowed to safely restart, that mitigates the need for financial support and actually see us starting to contribute back to the Treasury.”
Derek Moore, Deputy Chairman of AITO and also Co-Chairman of the TIA added: “We know that any sort of quarantine on arrival will render inbound tourism impossible, which also impacts on outbound tourism due to reduced demand for flights, as well as harming the UK’s hospitality and retail sectors.”
The TIA will be surveying their combined 7,000 member companies shortly to gather data which will reinforce their work in the future. There are also plans for the TIA to join the Future of Aviation and their All-Party Parliamentary Group, chaired by Henry Smith, MP for Crawley which includes Gatwick Airport.
Chris Crampton, Chairman, on behalf of PATA UK & Ireland says: “Travel has had a very tough year, and as we hope for the vaccination programme to be a success, it’s important that we plan a route out of this and a return to normality. This is just as much about supporting the UK travel industry (operators, agents, representation companies etc.) as it is about seeing an increase in outbound travel to our region and supporting all the stakeholders in destination too who rely heavily on tourism. Our colleagues in the 8 fellow trade organisations, that form the TIA, face the same challenges that we do, and by combining our resources and efforts, we are proud to be part of this alliance that we hope assists in creating the conditions where all elements of the travel and tourism industry can thrive again in the future.”
