Associations unite to form Travel Industry Alliance

The alliance represents more than 7,000 member companies throughout travel, tourism and aviation, across both the inbound and outbound, as well as leisure and business.

Its key aims will be to engage with government on key issues affecting travel and tourism, and to encourage greater industry-wide collaboration.

Members include Aito (the Specialist Travel Association), Atta (the African Travel and Tourism Association), Bar UK (the board of UK Airline Representatives), the BTA (the Business Travel Association), Clia (Cruise Lines International Association), the CTO (the Caribbean Tourism Organisation UK and Europe chapter), Lata (the Latin American Travel Association), Pata (the Pacific Asia Travel Association UK and Ireland chapter), and UKinbound.

The alliance has two initial and immediate objectives focusing on safely restarting travel, pledging to work with and/or alongside government to:

• To encourage the Foreign Office to pull back from issuing advisories due to Covid-19 and become a purely informational source; and
• To enable travellers to access the UK without any quarantine, at the earliest opportunity, whether through pre-departure testing, test and release, or some other measure that helps restart travel.

The TIA will be surveying its combined 7,000 member companies shortly to gather data to reinforce its work.

It also plans to join the government’s Future of Aviation All-Party Parliamentary Group, chaired by Gatwick MP Henry Smith.