Nine UK associations with more than 7,000 member companies have combined today to launch the Travel Industry Alliance (TIA).
The new alliance brings together associations representing the 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.
The TIA have two initial and immediate objectives in mind which focus on travel safely restarting.
The alliance will seek to collaborate with government departments to:
Encourage the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (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 chief executive 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.”
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, member of parliament for Crawley, which includes Gatwick Airport.
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.”
Participating associations in the 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) and UKinbound.