12 Mar
2020

Representing our industry’s needs to the Government

Last week we issued a survey to Members and held a conference call on the impact of the coronavirus outbreak so that ABTA is in the best possible position to represent your interests at this time, a recording of the conference call can be found here.

Members are understandably anxious as it is clear most are now inundated with calls from concerned travellers and have been doing all they can to provide assistance whilst taking important steps to protect their own businesses. 

ABTA has continued to do all it can to support Members by keeping its advice up to date and engaging with the media. We have issued another survey this week so we can continue to measure the ongoing impact. It is very important Members who submitted the original survey, and also new respondents, take part.

The information so far has been used to call on the Government to provide support for the industry and we have seen some steps announced in the Budget this week.

Our response to the spring Budget can be found here with an update on the measures announced to support businesses specifically affected by the outbreak. 

Some things don’t stand still and it was disappointing that in the Budget the Government also announced an inflationary increase to Air Passenger Duty, when at this crucial time what our industry needs is a waiver – which we have written to the Prime Minister about. For the longer term we welcomed the Government’s continued commitment to review APD in relation to domestic connectivity but strongly urge this to be part of a wider reform process.

The Government’s emergency measures announced yesterday must be turned into reality and ABTA will continue to use its influence to hold the Government to account and if needed call for additional support for healthy businesses in extraordinary circumstances.