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Immediate govt action urged to prevent more agency failures
Industry bodies have renewed calls for urgent government help amid fears more agencies will follow in the footsteps of Bristol-based agency Thornton’s Travel and be forced to close.
The cruise, touring and luxury holidays business, which started as a shipping agency in 1940, then became a travel agency in 1948, had marked its 80th anniversary this year.
E Thornton & Son, which traded as Thornton’s Travel, Thornton’s Cruise World and Thornton’s Travel Service, stopped taking bookings on September 30.
ABTA said: "Many travel businesses are in precarious position and will find it difficult to survive unless the government acts now with tailored support to assist the travel industry.
"The proposed Job Support Scheme simply doesn’t go far enough for most travel businesses, so we urge the government to review this as a matter of urgency to save jobs that would otherwise be viable, but for current measures to control the pandemic.
"Without tailored support people face losing the businesses and livelihoods they worked so hard to build.
"We also need the government to focus on those measures that will aid travel’s recovery, which includes the introduction of a fully regionalised approach to quarantine and foreign office advice, as well as introducing a testing regime. Those measures are vital to enable businesses to salvage something from a terrible year for travel."
Scottish Passenger Agents’ Association president Joanne Dooey said: "The breaking news that there are further key changes to the quarantine list, with Turkey being the most important from a Scottish perspective diminishes to a point of almost zero, the destinations which travel agents are able to sell at this time.
"Simultaneously, it increases travel agents’ workloads as they have to deal with yet another round of cancellations and the associated loss of all related income.
"Action to support travel is critical. There are 26,000 jobs supported by the outbound travel sector in Scotland. It’s not just the connectivity to the rest of the globe which we will lose without tailored help, thousands of travel professionals will lose their jobs."
Lisa
Lisa joined Travel Weekly nearly 25 years ago as technology reporter and then sailed around the world for a couple of years as cruise correspondent, before becoming deputy editor. Now freelance, Lisa writes for various print and web publications, edits Corporate Traveller’s client magazine, Gateway, and works on the acclaimed Remembering Wildlife series of photography books, which raise awareness of nature’s most at-risk species and helps to fund their protection.
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