Speaking at the Abta Travel Matters event in London, Tanzer warned 2023 would see the UK parliament end the incorporation of EU law into UK legislation, which “has the potential to de-stabilise the travel industry”.
He urged the government not to impede the sector while it coped with a ‘polycrisis’ that was set to remain throughout next year because of the war in Ukraine.
Tanzer said the industry was still recovering from the “dire” years of the pandemic. “International travel to and from the UK resumed only eight months ago, and although it’s been gratifying to see the return in demand for leisure and business travel, we are still not out of the woods.”
He said sectors like school travel had stopped completely during the pandemic, with resumption hampered by the ending of the Listed Travellers Scheme that previously meant groups of children did not need passports or visas. The UK government now also refused to recognise collective passports, he added.
“A more general obstacle to recovery – and not just in travel – has been the shortage of skilled and unskilled labour. This led to a bumpy restart for travel over the summer and continues to be a structural problem.
“The government did take steps to alleviate the problem by changing the vetting rules for new staff, but the lack of available entry routes for overseas workers continues to hamper the industry. We urgently need to understand the government’s policy on labour mobility – and particularly on youth mobility,” he said.
Looking ahead, he said the possible dilution of denied boarding compensation by the UK government was “one area of potential consumer detriment”, but more profound was the possible removal of consumer protections provided by the Package Travel Regulations, adding the government was currently reviewing both.
“The protections afforded by these regulations are essential to maintaining consumer confidence, which is in our members’ commercial interest.
"Designing the system of the future, and giving the industry time to adapt to it, is not the work of months, and I urge the government to push out the sunset deadline until both have been achieved,” he concluded.
