ABTA held its 20th annual Travel Law Seminar this week, hosted by K&L Gates, with nearly 200 delegates attending.

The programme included an impressive line-up of speakers, and reflected an extremely busy year for regulatory change. Subjects covered a wide range of issues affecting travel businesses including the Package Travel Regulations, ATOL reform and the new GDPR, which, as we’ll all know by now, comes into force tomorrow. With so many changes underway and still ahead for the industry, the Conference provided an opportunity for delegates to gain insights into how things will change and how these changes will affect their businesses.  

While our Travel Law Conference covers these topics in detail from a legal perspective, ABTA has been engaging with Members on these subjects for some time now: through ABTA Today, through updated Guidance materials, Conference Calls and through our free-to-attend Regional Business Meetings. We’ve just completed our Spring round of Regional Meetings, and I’d like to thank all of those Members and Partners who attended and supported these events. 

In this week’s ABTA Today you can read more about the updated guidance notes on Package Travel Regulations for business travel. Following the launch of the latest Travel Law Today Magazine at the Travel Law Seminar we will also have a dedicated Travel Law Today section in ABTA Today in the forthcoming weeks. We’ll share one article each week with a downloadable link via the Member zone, and this week we have picked an article from Alexandra Cooke, an Associate at Hamlins LLP, on the GDPR and data protection.

Finally, another subject that is of great concern for many Members is the impact of the implementation of Payment Services Directive 2 earlier this year, preventing companies from passing on card charges to customers. We are encouraging Members to use an ABTA template letter to contact their local MP in support of our call for government action to help reduce the cost of taking card payments. These letters will support ABTA’s forthcoming response to a Treasury consultation on digital and card payments, which closes on 5 June. An editable version of the template letter is available to download from the Member Zone of the ABTA website. You can also contact our public affairs team for more information: publicaffairs@abta.co.uk.