Ahead of the referendum, the association launched a report ‘What Brexit Might Mean for UK Travel’, which explored the key issues at stake for the travel industry and for travellers.

Following it, Abta has developed a detailed policy paper on the industry’s priorities for the coming UK-EU negotiations. The priorities paper is based on the findings and analysis within our pre-referendum report, as well as feedback from members in consultations held over the summer months.

We have identified five immediate priority areas and we are calling on the government to act quickly as it enters the negotiation process, to preserve vital rights and protections for travel businesses and UK travellers alike.

At this time, we are focusing on the main areas that we believe should guide the Government’s negotiation strategy, rather than on the minutiae of individual regulatory changes. This decision was based on our assessment that the government would be likely to adopt an approach based on regulatory stability, with many EU-originating laws continuing to be applied, at least initially, in the UK post-Brexit, a position confirmed by the Prime Minister’s speech at the Conservative Party conference in October.

Abta’s five priorities are:
1. Continued access to liberalised aviation markets (and for other transport modes) in Europe and globally.

2. Ensuring sufficient access to EU employment markets to allow UK travel companies to continue to operate efficiently. For example, enabling travel businesses to continue the practice of posting workers overseas for temporary periods.

3. The continuation of visa-free travel between the UK and EU countries, whilst ensuring that other practical barriers to travel are avoided. In particular, the Government must address the issue of future border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

4. Securing the UK’s continued participation in the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) scheme, which guarantees UK travellers access to health care systems across the EU.

5. Ensuring the UK government fully explores, as part of the development of the future UK-EU trading agreement, the best possible regulatory systems for the UK travel industry after we leave the EU.

In addition to these priorities, we have also highlighted the importance to the industry of the UK’s membership of the EU Customs Union, and harmonised VAT arrangements. We recognise that each of these is inherently linked to a future UK-EU agreement, but we have issued a clear call for transitional arrangements, should the UK opt to leave without the settlement of a long-term trading agreement with our EU partners.

There are three core principles that underpin the priorities that ABTA has identified:

• Firstly, the Government must seek to ensure barriers to travel are minimised. This is most obviously connected to the issue of visas, where we believe it is vitally important that leisure and business travellers can continue to move between the UK and the EU without the additional bureaucracy and costs that a visa regime would entail.

• Secondly, UK travel businesses should be able to continue to operate their businesses with as little disruption as possible. Most importantly this refers to employment and the ability to recruit, retain and utilise employees as operationally necessary – both in the UK and across the EU. Abta has particularly focused on the retention of the rights set out in the Posted Workers Directive in this regard.

• Thirdly, we believe the Government must seek to maintain the consumer confidence to which the success of the UK travel industry is so intricately linked. We believe this means securing continued participation for UK travellers in the regime, guaranteeing mutual access to European healthcare systems to carriers of the European Health Insurance Card.

Having developed our renewed position paper, we have also been very busy over the past few months sharing our messages and asks with the government and officials across Whitehall. For example, in recent months, I have attended roundtables on our post-Brexit future with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Karen Bradley, and her colleague from the Department for Transport, Chris Grayling. In addition, we have separately held a number of bilateral meetings with ministers, backbench MPs and political representatives from across the political spectrum, and right across the UK.

At every opportunity, Abta has outlined the important economic and employment contribution of the outbound travel industry to the UK. While there has naturally been much focus on the growth in domestic and inbound tourism, attributed by many to the fall in the value of the pound, Abta has spelled out the contrasting impact that currency fluctuations could have on outbound travel, both for holidaymakers and businesses alike. Outbound travel provides a boost of more than £11 billion each year to the UK economy, and our sector employs more than 214,000 people directly.

As we get closer to the beginning of negotiations, triggered under Article 50, Abta will continue to engage regularly with Members, and we will work hard to ensure the Government is fully aware of the industry’s requirements as a new relationship with Europe begins to take shape.