The Association of Northern Ireland Travel Agents (ANITA) has said that together with ABTA, it will be moving forward with a “united voice” and taking a “joint approach to dealing with MPs (MLAs for us) and government ministers as well as senior civil servants”.
ANITA Chairman Damian Murphy said: “Just over a week ago I attended a save future travel meeting chaired by Luke Petherbridge who is Director of Public Affairs at ABTA – and part of this meeting was about the Value of International Travel to the UK market- and to that effect ABTA have produced a document which outlines Northern Irelands contribution.
“The main bullet points from the document are that outbound travel brings £0.9bn to the NI economy annually (2% of total GVA)- It supports 16000 jobs (2% of total jobs) and that spending on outbound travel prior to departure is worth more than £500m to the NI economy annually.
The document goes onto break these figures into regions in Northern Ireland and makes interesting reading indeed. I would like to pass this on to as many MLAs as possible and would ask that anyone who feels they can help get this out contact me on dmurphy@terratravel.co.uk.
On Friday of last week myself and Sharon Thompson (who owns Thompson Travel) attended the first ever meeting of the Advantage Policy Advisory Group which was set up and chaired by Julia Lo Bue-Said . The meeting covered the effects of the Pandemic on our industry before going on to cover our industry strengths and again what we add to the UK economy.
“The aim of this group is to have an industry joint approach to dealing with MPs (MLAs for us) and government ministers as well as senior civil servants. As with the ABTA meeting it was constructive and positive in its outlook for our industries future.
“Sharon was our main speaker at this meeting and made some excellent points, the main one being our lack of clout and recognition of the contribution we bring to the over economy here. We both feel that going forward we have to find a way of gaining further recognition for outbound travel.
“We feel now is the time for both groups to show leadership and direction and take the industry forward with a united voice.”
