ABTA – The Travel Association has written to Conservative leadership candidates Rt Hon Liz Truss MP and Rishi Sunak MP to outline what is needed to support the UK travel industry through its recovery from the COVID pandemic, and to ensure a prosperous future for the sector.

The letter, sent from Chief Executive Mark Tanzer at the end of last week, explained the value of the UK international travel industry to the UK economy, as well as its role in supporting hundreds of thousands jobs and as a driver of growth.

It also says that to grasp the opportunities that lie ahead for the travel industry, and wider economy, it is essential that a constructive and ongoing dialogue is maintained between industry leaders, Ministers and officials. In particular, ABTA reiterated its call for clear ministerial responsibility to bring together the various strands of policy that affect international travel, and which fall across a number of Government departments.

Other issues raised as part of the letter included the industry’s commitment to net-zero in line with DfT’s Jet Zero Strategy, with investment in Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) and delivery of airspace modernisation as priorities. The importance of finding workable solutions to UK-EU labour mobility challenges was also emphasised, along with other matters relating to the UK’s departure from the EU.  

Mark Tanzer, Chief Executive of ABTA – The Travel Association said:

“The current travel landscape shows just how important it is that ABTA continues to impress on all politicians the value of the UK’s international travel industry to the UK economy. The political changes present an opportunity to reiterate what we need from this Government to ensure a prosperous and sustainable industry, and how we need to work together to achieve this. Our engagement with the candidates for Prime Minster builds on our ongoing work with Government, including recent meetings with Minsters and our work with officials and MPs from across all parties.”

Notes to editors

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 around 4,000 travel brands in Membership, providing a wide range of leisure and business travel services, with a combined pre-pandemic annual UK turnover of £40 billion. For more details about what we do, what being an ABTA Member means and how we help the UK public travel with confidence visit www.abta.com.