Today, we have published dates of ABTA’s next series of regional meetings; these events fall at a crucial time for the travel industry, and I encourage as many of you as possible to reserve your free place.

With a huge year of change for the industry, these meetings are an opportunity to gain the insight and practical advice to help prepare your business and to share your experiences.

In the last round of regional meetings, we discussed the new pieces of legislation coming into force this year, as well as emerging travel trends. We are now one month into 2018 and the ban on credit card charges is already in place. While we cannot reverse the restriction to pass on fees, these meetings will be an opportunity to update you on our call for a government review into the payment services market and for you to continue to share how this is affecting your business.

By the time of the first meeting, the draft Package Travel Regulations should have been published (expected in mid-February along with draft ATOL Regulations and ATOL Standard Terms), and ABTA’s legal experts will be at the meetings to give their initial reaction, gain feedback and explain what support will be available to help get your businesses ready by 1 July. Similarly many of you will be well briefed on GDPR by now, but the meetings will summarise the key points that travel companies need to pay attention to ahead of May.

As well as preparation for regulatory changes, we will also provide an update on “Travel with Confidence,” ABTA’s latest consumer campaign, and how it can benefit your business, as well as insight into this year’s top 12 travel trends. We’ll also demonstrate our new, free to access, e-learning hub - aimed at supporting frontline sales staff with practical information on a range of relevant topics.

This year, ABTA staff will be at the meetings 30 minutes before they start, to make sure you have plenty of opportunity to speak to us all on a one to one basis. Last year we saw a significant increase in the number of Members attending regional meetings and we hope to see this trend continue in 2018.

Register for a place at your local meeting here.

Finally, we have heard with sadness of the recent death of Derek Ketteridge. Derek was a longstanding, knowledgeable and very engaged ABTA Member; he will be much missed, and we send our condolences to his family and many friends.

Mark Tanzer, Chief Executive