ABTA – The Travel Association is launching its autumn events schedule with a mix of new hybrid events, virtual training days and free webinars for Members.

ABTA’s high-quality events have been designed to help travel businesses of all sizes stay up to date on important industry issues, give insights on recovery strategies and provide the best possible services to customers.

The events are open to the whole travel industry with reduced rates available for ABTA Members and Partners and to mark the launch of its Autumn events schedule, ABTA is offering 10% discount on bookings made until 8 October – just use the code ABTAAUTUMN21 when booking*.

The new hybrid events give participants the choice to attend in person, joining industry peers at a central London venue, or to tune in to the live content virtually through a custom platform. There are two events in this format taking place in the second half of November:

• Travel Trends conference (24 November) will give participants the most up-to-date insights on key sector trends including luxury, cruise, youth and over 50s travel, popular destinations, customer sentiment and marketing strategies to support the continued recovery of travel businesses. Speakers include Black Tomato Co-Founder, Tom Marchant and Kuoni’s Marketing Director, Dean Harvey.
   
• The Travel Regulations Conference (30 November) will explore the practical lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic, what the travel industry can expect from the major regulations going forward and what this could mean for travel businesses. Confirmed speakers at this event include David Marshall from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), among leaders in the industry.

The virtual training days offer in-depth, practical guidance in key areas:

• Digital Marketing for Travel (28 September)
• Travel VAT Training (19 October)
• Introduction to Health and Safety Risk Management and Auditing for Travel (21 October)
• Consumer Law in the Marketing and Selling of Holidays (8 December)

Business resilience webinars are free for ABTA Members and Partners, though non-Members are welcome to pay to attend. They provide practical guidance for travel businesses to navigate the challenges of COVID-19 and beyond. Upcoming webinars include Decarbonising Tourism (November) and Accessible Travel and Tourism (December), with more free webinars to be announced shortly.

ABTA’s Head of Events, Eve Coburn, said:
“We’re offering events on topics that have been in demand, from marketing and finance, to travel law and health and safety, presented by high calibre speakers and experts. We’re pleased to also be offering hybrid events – giving people the choice to attend in person – offering a much missed opportunity to network with industry colleagues – or to attend online . I look forward to seeing you – face-to-face or virtually.”

To find out more and register, visit abta.com/abtaevents.

Notes to editors
*Not applicable to the Travel Convention and cannot be applied retrospectively to bookings already made.

About ABTA
ABTA has been a trusted travel brand for over 70 years. Our purpose is to help our Members to grow their businesses successfully and sustainably, and to help their customers travel with confidence. The ABTA brand stands for support, protection and expertise. This means consumers have confidence in ABTA and a strong trust in ABTA Members. These qualities are core to us as they ensure that holidaymakers remain confident in the holiday products that they buy from our Members.

We help our Members and their customers navigate through today's changing travel landscape by raising standards in the industry; offering schemes of financial protection; providing an independent complaints resolution service should something go wrong; giving guidance on issues from sustainability to health and safety and by presenting a united voice to government to ensure the industry and the public get a fair deal.

ABTA has more than 4,300 travel brands in Membership, providing a wide range of leisure and business travel services, with a combined annual UK turnover of £39 billion. For more details about what we do, what being an ABTA Member means and how we help the British public travel with confidence visit www.abta.com.