Following the Government’s announcement of a new Global Travel Taskforce, Mark Tanzer, Chief Executive of ABTA – The Travel Association said:

“The creation of the Global Travel Taskforce shows a recognition from Government of the need to get people travelling again to support the travel industry, which has been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis. 

“The taskforce needs to focus on decisive and urgent action, not only on rapidly introducing a testing regime, but also on moving to a regionalised quarantine approach and lifting the global advisory against travel - returning to providing travel advice for individual countries based on the risk to a traveller in destination. 

“Other countries have already moved to introduce testing, and further delays will only serve to exacerbate the industry’s struggles – especially as the winter season is fast approaching. With furlough ending this month, and the new Job Support Scheme doing little to support travel businesses, without tailored support we’ll see more job losses and businesses folding.”

Notes to editors
ABTA has been a trusted travel brand for 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.