Editor Sophie Griffiths made an early morning appearance on Sky News’s The Early Rundown (see full clip below), before group editor Pippa Jacks discussed the campaign with LBC News.
They then joined a group of travel leaders in Westminster to deliver a letter to chancellor Rishi Sunak and transport secretary Grant Shapps calling for urgent sector-specific support for travel, which has been signed by more than 11,000 people.
Early Rundown presenter Niall Paterson: "The travel industry has suffered greatly during the coronavirus pandemic, [with] thousands of jobs on the line due to quarantine restrictions – but the industry is fighting back."
Griffiths said the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the UK travel industry had been "catastrophic".
"We’ve had Abta warning a week ago 39,000 jobs across the outbound travel sector, which equates to 20% of roles, have already been lost or placed at risk – this rises to 90,000 if you take into account supply chains," she said.
"We’ve seen the collapse of STA Travel, we’ve had household names like Shearings, Flybe, Cruise & Maritime Voyages all collapse so we are asking for urgent, sector-specific support [from government] or we are going to see more failures and more job losses.
"Every day we are reporting on news of redundancies – this just can’t go on, and the government has to provide urgent, sector-specific support for this industry if we are to save hundreds of thousands of jobs."
You can catch up with The Early Rundown via the Sky News website.
Meanwhile, speaking to LBC News’s Lisa Aziz, Jacks said that on a day when prime minister Boris Johnson said he wanted to see people getting back to work, thousands in travel had no jobs to go back to.
"We really need government to appreciate the unique position that the travel sector is in," said Jacks. "Travel companies have been giving back millions in refunds with no real prospect of any income."
Jacks added: "Travel professionals are having to work harder than ever to sort this mess out, to look after customers, make amendments and cancellations – the economics of it just aren’t going to work.
You can catch up with LBC News with Lisa Aziz via the LBC website.
