Nice holiday for all of those travel agencies. Maybe if they spent less time sunbathing on exoctic islands and more time getting to understand consumers they might not be struggling to exist.

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“Will ABTA or the delegates be offsetting their carbon emissions?”

I answered this yesterday in a comment on the original post. Not sure why the information hasn’t made it onto the new one.

Yes, there is a carbon offsetting supplement on every ABTA convention ticket. (In case there’s any confusion over that link – the Travel Convention and the ABTA Convention are one and the same thing.)

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As far as I am aware, ABTA’s annual member conference has offfset omissions for a number of years.

The UK versus overseas argument is one that gets bandied around a lot but the reality is that it always comes back to business.

In my opinion, conferences are often hosted overseas to 1) get the delegate numbers 2) introduce travel companies to new products/regions 3) provide a positive environment for business to get done.

from our own experience, a tremendous amount of work gets done when away at conferences.

delegates are less inclined to contact their offices/deal with work while overseas, meaning that they can concentrate on new business opportunities or learn from peers about important industry issues (such as the eco debate) without the usual distractions.

meanwhile, some would argue that the deals that are sourced or completed, or the knowledge gained at the sessions, actually benefit consumers.

some might also argue that consumers who criticise the industry for flying overseas to conduct business but still want to travel by air themselves is perhaps ever so slightly hypocritical.

It’s always a good debate to have.

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Darren: ABTA held its convention in Tenerife last year, not Gram Canaria.

The bottom line is that deals which impact directly on the travel industry are done at conferences. Perhaps some of the benefits to the consumer, by way of new deals, would not take place if these conferences did not take place.

I have never been an apologist for the travel industry – Travolution attempts to be a disrupter as much as you sometimes are – but the wheels of modern business are oiled at events such as conferences.

To your second point, only around a quarter of delegates are agents at the convention, so plenty of deals are done between intermediairies and suppliers (airlines, hotels, operators).

In addition, most senior people would absolutely feed down some of the knowledge they gain from events. The reason for them being there is not to promote themselves but their companies. And, in turn, pass along the information to the frontline.

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Once again, without trying to argue on behalf of ABTA (they are big enough and, er, handsome enough to do it themselves), one of the arguments that is worth considering is that if any major travel body decides to host its annual conference on home soil isn’t it sending out the wrong message, almost conceding that the very thing that it does IS damaging the environment?

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I would imagine that the vast number of consumers do not know that the travel industry has a tendency to have its annual conferences overseas.

In the grand scheme of things, I suspect customers which are very concerned (and that number is completely unknown, let’s face it) would indeed like their travel companies to lead by example by implementing initiatives with slightly more substance than just reigning in their attendance at overseas conferences.

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Who cares about the carbon offsetting price, anyway? Anyone with even the most basic of science knows that paying people to plant trees in no way compensates for the damage you cause by flying. Or just living for that matter.
If you don’t want to damage the environment STAY AT HOME. No-one in the Travel industry is truly environmentally friendly, it’s not possible. If you want to be an environmentalist then go work and for the National Trust. And quit driving. Quit using electricity. Quit flying. Quit reading wasteful newspapers.

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Agreed. Leading by example means demonstrating that sustainable travel is possible, by continuing to work on the carbon footprint of events, and developing links with local businesses and environmental projects.

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Even though Kevin is correct about local travel agencies are the ones who need to lead by example it would seem Darren, correct to assume that the ABTA conference should be held in Great Britain. The reason that ABTA might get critisied is a poor argument and a cop-out in my opinion. I am a consumer who has found this blog via StumbleUpon. I do not work within travel. I am a postie.

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Question for Kevin and Nathan. Are you fighting your corner because you have to as travel journalists for large travel publications who attend these events or because you really believe that conferences work better for the industry and consumer when held abroad?

Sue

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Very interesting discussion.

We go on holiday three times a year but we do offset our carbon emissions. I do not see an arguement here though. ABTA should be holding this event in the UK it is really as simple as that.

Lead by example.

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Sue Archibold:

As editor of Travolution and a senior member of the TWgroup management team, I think I can speak for the whole group (Travel Weekly, Travolution and Gazetteers.com) when I say that I wonder who would force us as journalists to write positive coverage about the ABTA Convention and its location this year, or any other year?

We do not “have to” do anything just because we work for large business publications who benefit from going to the events. Our respective brands attend in order to carry out multimedia coverage of the conference sessions and to meet senior contacts.

My defensiveness here is only in response to a challenge over our integrity.

Our comments in previous parts of the post have set out the reasons why many travel conferences are generally held abroad and why they will probably continue to do so.

Travolution, as in previous years, is organising and will chair a number of masterclasses at the event. These specific parts of the agenda are designed to educate travel executives about new processes and trends – information which helps them and, in turn, benefits consumers.

ABTA enjoys healthy attendances at its overseas conferences. I suspect this wouldn’t be the case if they were always held in the UK. And then who would lose out? The industry benefits from getting together in large numbers to understand more about major issues affecting the sector – including environmental concerns.

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@Sue – the latter. Does a travel-focused event work better when it has a travel element? Yes. We don’t organise the events, and the fact that our jobs involve attending them (sometimes – as it happens I’m not going to ABTA) doesn’t oblige us to defend their every aspect.

It’s interesting to hear all your views on this. Personally I find the ‘lead by example’ argument strange – what is the example you feel you need or want?

If it’s to offset all your flights, ABTA has. If it’s to avoid unnecessary flights, I don’t see that having your holiday abroad, or inviting your friends to a wedding abroad, or going to see your team play abroad, is any more ‘necessary’ than having a convention abroad.

Like the convention, those things are sometimes just better that way. So is cutting unnecessary flights really the example you want, and would you follow it?

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Nathan highlights a good point here and perhaps it is worth you, Darren, throwing it back to your readers.

Run a poll on Travel-Rants.com which says: “If the travel industry axes its various annual overseas events, I will follow suit and only holiday in the UK. Yes? or No?”

As an aside, I’m glad we are all having this debate – but once again (as one of Darren’s recent blog posts highlighted) it does not involve any travel companies. It’s just a scrap between bloggers, consumers and a couple of hacks.

Which is a shame.

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@Kevin, you talk about customers who are “truly concerned”. I don’t think they exist, at least not regarding the environment. Sure, some of them may talk the talk about saving the planet BUT if they were truly concerned they wouldn’t fly. Take customers like Jamie, who also posted about how he “offsets” his emissions. They will happily sit at home talking about saving the planet, but when push comes to shove do they do the environmentally responsible thing and holiday at home? No, they may care about the planet but not so much that they’ll miss out on their “right” to a week in the sun. ABTA going and holding their convention abroad is yet another example of the selfishness endemic in the modern mindset.

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Darren

Blamey I have one day off work and you post a massive one . Why conference overseas from a view of a small travel agent.

Well we mostly sell overseas holidays. (About 5 to 1 and we are a UK specialist centre)
The UK conferences (yes they do happen) are not so well attended.
We already have one of the worlds biggest travel events in the UK (The World Travel Market).

The last conference I attended was Disneyland Paris, I went by train and did carbon offset.
It was a normal 3 day event, starting between 7 and 8 finishing (excluding dinners) between 6-8. I could not remember the journey home I slept. They are hard work

Just my view as a small agent.

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Really good point Darren! Its a bit like all these G8 and all the other environmental/crisis, summits etc, ‘its lets all go a to an island in the pacific for a few days and well have a chat and about what they’re going to have a chat about at the next plush resort or another faraway place, we’ll all have another knees up next year!’ Thus enabling more millions to be spent transporting and housing all these thousands of bureaucrats, so that they can make their undecisions and postponements.

In respect to the travel industry; we should be pioneering large scale local video conferencing with each local group of their respective trade associations representing their turf and focusing on local/regional issues more, likewise for the other member groups around the world. (Good for the local service industry too!)
Naturally, of course time differences etc will be need to be addressed, maybe a solution could be a chosen rep from each group could attend for example certain main events, those reps will have to travel by train wherever they are in the world to go to these destinations, they could also do a travellogblog on the journey, for others to see where they are, what they are seeing,doing and experiencing;-)

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@Darren – you say again that business travel is different to a family holiday. I simply don’t see what the moral distinction is. All there is to justify a holiday is your own desire to take it. If that’s all that is required, you leave a loophole plenty big enough for business travel to get through – particularly when there is a clear benefit to the business event taking place overseas.

TBH seeing keen travellers demand that the travel industry encourages them not to travel – all the while admitting that they have no desire to stop travelling and no intention of doing so – puzzles me.

Kev is right though, good discussion. It is genuinely interesting to see what people outisde of the industry think.

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I think it’s a bit silly to think that the travel industry would not travel to a conference. It’s what they do. Any conference is intended to get people together and get people talking in a relaxed atmopshere away from the everyday grind of the office. I think as it’s the travel industry going, it highlights the point more profoundly than if it was the roof tilers of Ireland going out there.

The environment/carbon offsetting questions relates to everyone being responsible in the way they travel to this or any other event. Sure, we could all sit at home and use MSN to speak, but we’re all human and nothing yet beats meeting someone face to face. Until something turns up that can change that, we’ll always need conferences!

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@Darren, WHY must the Travel Industry lead by example when it comes to reducing carbon emissions? Why should we give a damn about carbon emissions? Our customers certainly don’t.

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Off topic, I am certainly not convinced about how linked to the environment APD is. But people shouldn’t forget there’s no VAT on flights.

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Hi Darren,

Congratulations on a great, well designed blog.
I’m sure that the enviornment will feature heavily on the agenda at this years conference.
Here are my thoughts on your post.

1) Most ABTA members are focused on overseas holidays so it makes more sense for them to have their conference overseas. The ABTA conference is the last one to be critical of, why should lets say a UK based accountancy firm have their conference in Mallorca ?

2) Public transport is so patchy in the UK many delegates would have to drive anyway. Plus, e.g. if the conference was in London delegates from Scotland may fly. Having a conference in the canaries mean delegates can fly from their local airport.

3) Travel agents need to sample the products they are selling, so again it makes sense for the conference to be overseas, so the delegates can experience the flights and hotels and give accurate and worthwhile information to customers. Many delegates will take the opportunity to visit various hotels while at the conference to get an accurate view of them.

ABTA should consider holding a UK conference, in line with the proportion of UK breaks their members sell, so that maybe once every 10 years or so and would probably be held at Butlins.

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We’re getting some hints at what the 2009 location will be – they’ve tipped Macau, Tel Aviv, and (drum roll) Liverpool. We’ve got a poll on them on the homepage of Travel Weekly at the moment, Darren – come have your say

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I have an interest in this as from 1993 to 2006 I was responsible for the organisation of the event when I was Head of Corporate Affairs at ABTA.

As has been stated already we introduced the carbon offsetting of delegates’ flights at a very early stage using Climate Care. We were the first significant event to do this within the UK travel industry – indeed one of the first big conferences of UK residents to do it at all. The charge was mandatory so it was paid regardless of whether the delegate care or not.

While I accept the environmental arguments in favour of UK events there are two problems that a UK event faces. All of the travel conferences are helped by support from host tourist boards. In my experience UK tourist boards are generally not very interested in helping to subsidise a meeting of travel agents and tour operators, 80% of whose business is international outbound travel. Secondly, with an event in the UK that can be reached by public transport or car, there are few incentives to book early. With an overseas event there is usually limited airlift and if you book late you might not get flights – or you might have to pay full fare. No such limit is faced with a UK event. People then choose to book later, and as one of the motivations to book is that your competitors have booked, if everyone waits for everyone else to book, the event can fail. If it chooses a UK venue ABTA will need to come up with some clever ideas to motivate early booking.

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