Today’s edition (22 June) features the trade’s reaction to the news dnata Travel Group is proposing, subject to consultation, to merge its historic Gold Medal and Travel 2 brands.

We also have the full details of the proposed merger, the consultation taking place across the business, and what the impact could be for dnata-owned agent consortium Global Travel Group.

Additionally, we’ve taken stock of the first week’s high street trading for several months for many agents after they were given the green light to reopen last Monday (15 June).

Our news pages also cover the latest on quarantine, air bridges and the status of the Foreign Office’s travel advice. We also celebrate out new TTG Top 50 Travel Agencies No.1 Agency UK & Ireland – Deben Travel. Heartiest of congratulations to boss Lee Hunt and the team.

Further back, we hear of increasing interest in post-Covid breaks to more remote destinations as we round off coverage of TTG’s second Digital Destinations Festival, while Hurtigruten sets out its intention to sail ex-UK cruises later this year – if the country’s rate of coronavirus infection is brought further under control.

Arundel Travel’s Helen Parry, Lisa Lightly from East of England Co-op Travel and TravelTime World’s Jackie Steadman joined our latest informative Business Support Live panel to discuss how they are planning to reopen on the high street, and how they’ve got their premises ready to do so.

TTG editor Sophie Griffiths joined a BAME Women in Travel CIC panel entitled Racial diversity: There is work to be done in the travel industry, which explored the sector’s response to the death of George Floyd and the vast distance it has yet to go, and how the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement has captured public conscience in recent weeks.

Agent Matters returned to the subject of marketing, and heard how focus is shifting to longer-term marketing efforts, to building partnerships, and using the coronavirus crisis to explore new ways of engaging clients.

TTG also caught up with former Global Travel Group commercial director Cherie Richards after she moved to a new chief business development officer role with travel franchise firm Not Just Travel.

Elsewhere, the results of TTG’s tenth Travel Agent Tracker survey found agents were accelerating their plans to resume operations on the high street, while more than three-quarters of respondents took a new holiday enquiry in the week to 12 June.

Our features team this week looked at how to break difficult news to staff kindly as some areas of the sector prepare to contract over the coming months due to the effects of the coronavirus crisis.

Sophie Nelson, travel and partnerships manager, international at Avid Budget Group, explores how best to seize opportunity at times of adversity, while reflecting on her first weeks and months as part of the TTG 30 Under 30 class of 2020.

The Caribbean, meanwhile, is the focus of our main destination feature, looking at how the region is beginning to reopen its borders and reopen to tourism.

Finally, Charitable Travel’s Melissa Tilling pens this week’s One Last Thing, in which she encourages everyone within the sector to do their utmost to #BuildBackBetter following the crisis, and how this can be achieved.

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