Associaton of Travel Agents announces its choice for ABTA chairman

The Association of Travel Agents has come out in favour of Roger Allard to be the next ABTA chairman.

The association created last year by Steve Endacott of On Holiday Group and Kane Pirie, formerly of Travel Republic, voted unanimously in favour of Allard, executive chairman of All Leisure Group, over his rival candidate, Sunvil managing director Noel Josephides, at a meeting last week.

In a statement, the ATA said the vote was lead by its high street members, who will be able to garner a significant number of votes for Allard if all their individual shops follow the recommendation of their consortia head offices.

ATA member include Hays Travel, The Travel Network Group and Barrhead Travel as well as online travel agents Travel Republic, On The Beach, Low Cost Holidays, Bookable Holidays and Alpha Rooms.

"We formed the ATA as a single-issue body to fight for fair treatment of agents within the impending European Travel Package Regulations and to balance out the power held by the UK tour operators within ABTA," said Endacott.

"It is key that the ATA unites the voices of independent high street agents and on-line travel agents and this unanimous vote clearly shows we are achieving this".

The ATA said it believed Allard was a "highly respected and experience member of the travel industry who could unite all key sector of the ABTA church, with his detailed knowledge of tour operating, travel agents and cruise".

ATA member Bill Munroe, owner of Barrhead Travel said: "I have the greatest respect for Noel, but he is clearly an old school tour operator and in the current circumstances would be a highly divisive figure to lead ABTA.

"Roger Allard has a much more balanced background and does not head a traditional tour operation with the natural bias that this brings".

John Hays of Hays Travel said: "The ATA have decided to back Roger Allard on the basis of his broad range of travel experience and his proven ability to effectively lobby important stake holders such as the CAA. For me the decision was based solely on the merits of each candidate, although I do accept that Noel could be a divisive appointment."

The ATA also pointed out that when Travel Republic’s Kane Pirie resigned from the ABTA Board he was not replaced with a travel agent and the further loss of John McEwan from the board leaves it "relatively light of travel agency representation" and it contains no representative of the online travel agency community.

Voting for ABTA chairman will be completed late next month and the results announced in early July.

A TravelMole poll this week put Josephides a nose ahead of Allard, with 54% of the votes.