Reynolds reveals massive ABTA operation

ABTA chief executive Ian Reynolds has revealed the scope of the association’s involvement in communicating the impact of the tsunami and in bringing people home from affected resorts. On 4.30am on Boxing Day morning, public relations chief Keith Betton was woken to deal with emergency press calls and over the next three days ABTA personnel conducted 30 television broadcasts. Reynolds said ABTA had plenty of experience dealing with emergencies, following last summer’s hurricanes in the Caribbean, and was able to immediately set up conference calls with tour operators and the Foreign Office. Charters were dispatched that day to Thailand to pick up stricken holidaymakers, while those in Sri Lanka were put on scheduled services. Speaking at a Tourism Society debate, Reynolds said: “Of the 10,000 Brits in affected resorts, about 6,500 were ABTA members. “But for compassionate reasons we brought back independent travellers, where there was capacity on aircraft.” Reynolds said tour operators were currently very sympathetic to holidaymakers wishing to cancel future trips to affected countries, but said they would, at some stage, revert back to their normal booking conditions. He also added tour operators were currently giving proportional refunds to holidaymakers who had their holidays cut short because of the disaster. “Tour operators have acted wonderfully during this time, looking after people, finding them hotel rooms and giving them clothes,” he said. “But it’s not right for us to go on about that during such a time of crisis,” he said. Meanwhile, Geoffrey Lipman, special advisor to the secretary general of the UN World Tourism Organisation, said the tsunami disaster could have a greater impact than other events such as 9/11, ethnic cleansing and hurricanes in the Caribbean. “To assume there will not be some effect hitting the rest of the industry is naieve,” he said. Lipman said lessons had to be learnt from the disaster and procedures put in place to try to prevent such a huge loss of life in future. “We need national crisis systems and public education about what you should do in this situation,” he said. But Lipman added that other tragedies around the world should not be forgotten. “In Africa, as many people die every year of aids as they have in the tsunami,” he said.