This column was first published in Travel Weekly on 8 June 2023.

Luke Petherbridge, director of public affairs at Abta, highlights the association’s annual Travel Matters conference

On June 14 we’ll be holding the travel industry’s leading policy conference – Abta’s Travel Matters. It brings together politicians, government officials and industry leaders to debate the political and policy issues facing our sector.

Both the aviation and maritime minister, Baroness Vere, and the shadow minister, Mike Kane MP, will be speaking at the event – giving their vision for the travel industry and its future relationship with Westminster.

We’ll also be exploring the UK’s relationship with the EU post-Brexit, and what travel businesses need policymakers to focus on as we look to enhance trading relations in the years ahead. In particular, we’ll focus on labour mobility as we share findings from a new joint research project with Seasonal Businesses in Travel (SBiT) on what has happened since the end of the Brexit transition period.

While Travel Matters is an opportunity to discuss the pressing issues facing the industry – it’s also a chance to shine a light on the work Abta does to represent members’ interest to governments and authorities, much of which normally happens behind the scenes.

If I was to really simplify our lobbying and political engagement activity it could be summarised into three types of work.

Firstly, there is our ongoing engagement about the value of our industry. This is the backbone of what we do, and there isn’t any engagement with an MP, government minister or official, or other political stakeholder where we don’t talk about how our sector supports the UK economy. It’s backed up by Abta’s research which demonstrates that the UK’s international travel industry generates £80bn a year for the UK economy and supports 1.5m people right across the UK.

Secondly, we have our proactive engagement where we take a list of current policy priorities to politicians, regulators and other stakeholders to try to bring about change.

The work we’re doing around post-Brexit issues is a good example of this. As well as employee mobility, we’re also looking at a number of other matters – including mutual recognition of professional qualifications and school travel. We have seen some progress here recently with the UK and French governments committing to making school travel easier and we’re following up with the relevant departments on this, working closely with the School Travel Forum and UKinbound.

Thirdly there is the work we do to engage with the agenda set by government, parliament and regulators. This includes working to ensure the views of members and the wider industry are represented in consultation responses, like ongoing ATOL and other consumer protection reform, or responding to policy developments such as the Department for Education’s review on post-16 education where Abta is part of a new working group which will be looking to proactively shape the future of pathways into our industry.

As you can see from the examples above, we don’t do our lobbying and political engagement in isolation of others – working collaboratively with other associations and organisations where there are shared goals is really important.

We have lots of ways we do that, including through the Future Travel Coalition – which was set up during the pandemic and includes 15 trades bodies and organisations. The Coalition has a small set of clearly defined policy priorities, which include working together to demonstrate the value of the UK travel industry to governments across the UK.

Abta’s role in representing such a broad section of the industry, in a non-commercial and non-competitive way, was vital in encouraging the various different sectoral bodies and other organisations to put aside their differences and come together as the Future Travel Coalition for the greater good.

Abta is the UK’s leading voice for travel, and we are well recognised and respected within government for providing insights on the sector, as well as evidence-based arguments and practical policy solutions. With such a busy policy and regulatory agenda lying ahead of us – and a general election on the horizon – there has never been a better time for the sector to come together to discuss our joint challenges. I hope to see many of you at Travel Matters.