At Travel Gossip, we hear occasional gripes from agents about the price of ABTA membership, especially in the light of the cost of living crisis, so we asked Head of Membership Danny Waine and Director of Public Affairs Luke Petherbridge if the association really offers agents value for money.
Not surprisingly, both Danny and Luke argue that ABTA membership is worth the price tag, even though they acknowledge that its headcount has shrunk significantly since the pandemic.
Over the past five years, 350 businesses have left ABTA and, while 100 new ones have joined, that still leaves a deficit of 250.
In the past 12 months, 57 companies left but only 25 new ones joined, so the number of head office members fell by 32 to stand at 808 in July 2024.
However, the collective turnover of all ABTA members is back up to pre-pandemic levels, at £40 billion. Also, there has been an increase in the overall number of branches, with 75 more joining in the past year.
“The number of branches and managed branches has increased for the first time in quite a while,” said Danny. “It’s only a small increase, 2% in the last few months, but it’s quite significant given what we’ve been through in the past few years, and that’s been driven by independent agents opening additional stores.
“From my point of view that’s been really nice to see because obviously it has been really hard over the past five years.”
Crucially, there hasn’t been a single ABTA failure in the past 12 months, the first year that the association hasn’t had to deal with a financial collapse. Danny said that could be partly due to the bookings bounce-back post COVID, but it is in part due to ABTA’s support to its members.
Luke pointed out that lots of travel businesses would have gone bust during the pandemic if it hadn’t been for ABTA’s creation of Refund Credit Notes, which were eventually given financial backing by the Government, and business rates relief, for which it campaigned.
Luke’s team also helped agents fill out grant applications, while Director of Legal Affairs Simon Bunce assisted members with business interruption insurance claims, both of which helped keep businesses afloat during the pandemic.
“The fact that [post-COVID] sales have been going so well obviously helps,” added Danny, part of whose role is to support members who are struggling financially, as well as those who want to exit the industry.
“What we have seen over the last three years is more businesses being taken over,” he said, adding that they often seek ABTA’s support as part of this process. “It might be succession planning, the owners might be passing it on to the next generation, they might be seeing investment from other ABTA members, or outside investment.
“We try to make that process as easy as possible because from our point of view and from a customer confidence perspective we want businesses to thrive and be as successful as possible.”
There has been ‘a lot of hand holding’, said Danny, and he and ABTA’s member support team have had lots of one-to-one conversations with agents over the past three years.
“We get members come to us and say ‘can you give us advice, do you know anyone who might be interested in buying the company?’.
“We have ABTA partners that do the mergers and acquisitions, but if we have individual members that come to us asking for help we all try to support one another.”
Danny insisted that the ABTA membership fee of ‘£100 to £150’ a month for a small, one branch agency is ‘good value’ when you consider it offers this kind of support, along with a plethora of other services. He pointed out that the business model terms and conditions, available to members free of charge, is worth ‘thousands of pounds’ alone.
“Having run a travel business myself, I think actually you get really good value for what you pay. If you use the brand in the right way, and that’s not just about using it on the website or in the brochure but actually from a sales perspective when you’re talking to a customer about why you’re an ABTA member, the code of conduct, giving them that reassurance, that helps you to close a sale as well.”
However, Danny said that many members aren’t accessing the full breadth of ABTA services available to them, which is why the association is launching a new trade campaign, ‘It’s easy to get more’, to promote its services to agents over the next 12 months.
“When it comes to all the other services that members get access to through the subscription, then they can definitely get more value for money out of it,” he added.
“And from a business point of view, the more you put in and engage with ABTA, the more you are going to get out of it.”
Some businesses just sign up to ABTA to be able to display the Association’s logo, and Danny said this still gives businesses ‘credibility’, though even ABTA’s own Holiday Habits survey found it was slightly less important to consumers than the ATOL logo. Some 42% of the 2,000 consumers who responded to the survey this summer said knowing they’d booked with an ABTA member gave them confidence to travel, compared to 48% who said they got confidence from ATOL protection.
To encourage more member engagement with ABTA, it has made it easier for them to attend regional meetings, having maintained the online events that were introduced during the pandemic. “It’s not as though you have to take that much out of your diary to come to regional meetings; once a month you can just dial in, you can submit questions in advance, you can speak directly with us,” said Luke.
Campaigns
A key part of ABTA’s work is lobbying MPs on behalf of the travel industry. Luke has a team of three lobbyists, and Trudie Clements, ABTA LifeLine Director and Sustainable Aviation Advisor, represents the industry on sustainability.
“We have always done the job of speaking up for the industry as a whole,” said Luke, citing an annual report produced by ABTA that details the £49 billion outbound travel contributes to the economy and the 823,000 jobs the industry supports.
“This year for the first time we did constituency level data so when we are having meetings with MPs we can talk specifically about the impact of outbound travel to their own constituencies,” added Luke. “We make that data freely available to the entire industry, so people can use that to lobby MPs if they want to.”
During the pandemic, ABTA set up the Future Travel Coalition, which now consists of 15 trade bodies from across the sector, including AITO, Advantage, the Business Travel Association, UKinbound and, newest member, the Institute of Travel and Tourism.
“The purpose of that group is to agree on common priorities and then work together advocating those to Government. We meet monthly to exchange information and intelligence from any meetings we’ve had in the meantime and to agree future priorities and also to collaborate on the surveys we do twice a year on what’s going on in the industry, which supports our ongoing lobbying activity,” explained Luke.
Recent wins from ABTA’s lobbying efforts, include:
This is in addition to ABTA’s day-to-day work, such as working on reforming ATOL and the Package Travel Regulations, and ‘making sure the nuts and bolts of the industry work on behalf of members’, added Luke
“I would say we are effective, I would say we are well trusted by Government. If you look at what the Government has done early on, this new Government since the election, whether it be on sustainable aviation fuels, the apprenticeship levy reform process, business rates reform which they’ve committed to, whether it be youth mobility for example that is on the agenda, clearly they have listened to our industry prior to getting into Government and have acted on a lot of those areas early on.”
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Not surprisingly, both Danny and Luke argue that ABTA membership is worth the price tag, even though they acknowledge that its headcount has shrunk significantly since the pandemic.
Over the past five years, 350 businesses have left ABTA and, while 100 new ones have joined, that still leaves a deficit of 250.
In the past 12 months, 57 companies left but only 25 new ones joined, so the number of head office members fell by 32 to stand at 808 in July 2024.
However, the collective turnover of all ABTA members is back up to pre-pandemic levels, at £40 billion. Also, there has been an increase in the overall number of branches, with 75 more joining in the past year.
“The number of branches and managed branches has increased for the first time in quite a while,” said Danny. “It’s only a small increase, 2% in the last few months, but it’s quite significant given what we’ve been through in the past few years, and that’s been driven by independent agents opening additional stores.
“From my point of view that’s been really nice to see because obviously it has been really hard over the past five years.”
Crucially, there hasn’t been a single ABTA failure in the past 12 months, the first year that the association hasn’t had to deal with a financial collapse. Danny said that could be partly due to the bookings bounce-back post COVID, but it is in part due to ABTA’s support to its members.
Luke pointed out that lots of travel businesses would have gone bust during the pandemic if it hadn’t been for ABTA’s creation of Refund Credit Notes, which were eventually given financial backing by the Government, and business rates relief, for which it campaigned.
Luke’s team also helped agents fill out grant applications, while Director of Legal Affairs Simon Bunce assisted members with business interruption insurance claims, both of which helped keep businesses afloat during the pandemic.
“The fact that [post-COVID] sales have been going so well obviously helps,” added Danny, part of whose role is to support members who are struggling financially, as well as those who want to exit the industry.
“What we have seen over the last three years is more businesses being taken over,” he said, adding that they often seek ABTA’s support as part of this process. “It might be succession planning, the owners might be passing it on to the next generation, they might be seeing investment from other ABTA members, or outside investment.
“We try to make that process as easy as possible because from our point of view and from a customer confidence perspective we want businesses to thrive and be as successful as possible.”
There has been ‘a lot of hand holding’, said Danny, and he and ABTA’s member support team have had lots of one-to-one conversations with agents over the past three years.
“We get members come to us and say ‘can you give us advice, do you know anyone who might be interested in buying the company?’.
“We have ABTA partners that do the mergers and acquisitions, but if we have individual members that come to us asking for help we all try to support one another.”
Danny insisted that the ABTA membership fee of ‘£100 to £150’ a month for a small, one branch agency is ‘good value’ when you consider it offers this kind of support, along with a plethora of other services. He pointed out that the business model terms and conditions, available to members free of charge, is worth ‘thousands of pounds’ alone.
“Having run a travel business myself, I think actually you get really good value for what you pay. If you use the brand in the right way, and that’s not just about using it on the website or in the brochure but actually from a sales perspective when you’re talking to a customer about why you’re an ABTA member, the code of conduct, giving them that reassurance, that helps you to close a sale as well.”
However, Danny said that many members aren’t accessing the full breadth of ABTA services available to them, which is why the association is launching a new trade campaign, ‘It’s easy to get more’, to promote its services to agents over the next 12 months.
“When it comes to all the other services that members get access to through the subscription, then they can definitely get more value for money out of it,” he added.
“And from a business point of view, the more you put in and engage with ABTA, the more you are going to get out of it.”
Some businesses just sign up to ABTA to be able to display the Association’s logo, and Danny said this still gives businesses ‘credibility’, though even ABTA’s own Holiday Habits survey found it was slightly less important to consumers than the ATOL logo. Some 42% of the 2,000 consumers who responded to the survey this summer said knowing they’d booked with an ABTA member gave them confidence to travel, compared to 48% who said they got confidence from ATOL protection.
To encourage more member engagement with ABTA, it has made it easier for them to attend regional meetings, having maintained the online events that were introduced during the pandemic. “It’s not as though you have to take that much out of your diary to come to regional meetings; once a month you can just dial in, you can submit questions in advance, you can speak directly with us,” said Luke.
Campaigns
A key part of ABTA’s work is lobbying MPs on behalf of the travel industry. Luke has a team of three lobbyists, and Trudie Clements, ABTA LifeLine Director and Sustainable Aviation Advisor, represents the industry on sustainability.
“We have always done the job of speaking up for the industry as a whole,” said Luke, citing an annual report produced by ABTA that details the £49 billion outbound travel contributes to the economy and the 823,000 jobs the industry supports.
“This year for the first time we did constituency level data so when we are having meetings with MPs we can talk specifically about the impact of outbound travel to their own constituencies,” added Luke. “We make that data freely available to the entire industry, so people can use that to lobby MPs if they want to.”
During the pandemic, ABTA set up the Future Travel Coalition, which now consists of 15 trade bodies from across the sector, including AITO, Advantage, the Business Travel Association, UKinbound and, newest member, the Institute of Travel and Tourism.
“The purpose of that group is to agree on common priorities and then work together advocating those to Government. We meet monthly to exchange information and intelligence from any meetings we’ve had in the meantime and to agree future priorities and also to collaborate on the surveys we do twice a year on what’s going on in the industry, which supports our ongoing lobbying activity,” explained Luke.
Recent wins from ABTA’s lobbying efforts, include:
- Working with the Ministry of Justice to stamp out fake sickness complaints, which were costing the industry £250m a year
- Persuading Government to back £2bn of Refund Credit Notes
- Securing travel industry access to retail, hospitality and leisure grants during the pandemic
- Securing 75% business rates relief for high street agents and campaigning for business rates reform – it expects to see progress on this with the new Labour Government in the next few months
- Campaigning for reform of the apprenticeship level to make it more flexible, for example to fund short course to upskill existing employees, which Labour has indicated will be heart of its policies
- Putting in place new training courses, ready to be submitted early next year, to replace the education provision for 16-18 year olds, which was scrapped by the previous Government
This is in addition to ABTA’s day-to-day work, such as working on reforming ATOL and the Package Travel Regulations, and ‘making sure the nuts and bolts of the industry work on behalf of members’, added Luke
“I would say we are effective, I would say we are well trusted by Government. If you look at what the Government has done early on, this new Government since the election, whether it be on sustainable aviation fuels, the apprenticeship levy reform process, business rates reform which they’ve committed to, whether it be youth mobility for example that is on the agenda, clearly they have listened to our industry prior to getting into Government and have acted on a lot of those areas early on.”
The post Is ABTA membership worth the fee? appeared first on Travel Gossip.
Continue reading...
