NEWS 1
YOU NEED TO KNOW
The inaugural ITCMS was held at London’s Haberdashers’ Hall
AT A GLANCE About ITCMS
l The inaugural International Tourism Crisis Management Summit brought together more than 140 delegates and 30 expert speakers to discuss how travel should manage crises.
l The summit – the first in a planned series – aims to be a forum at which the global travel industry can discuss and share best practice and agree how it can work together to mitigate the impact of geopolitical unrest and natural disasters.
l The first event took place on November 10 in London. It was organised by Travel Weekly parent Jacobs Media Group.
UK’s ban on Sharm flights ‘helps to breed terrorism’
Lee Hayhurst
lee.hayhurst@travelweekly.co.uk
Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh airport is now “safer than Heathrow” yet Britain remains the only country in Europe not to have permitted a resumption of flying, the inaugural International Travel Crisis Management Summit heard last week.
Egypt is confident the ban is
close to being lifted (Travel Weekly, November 10) but industry leaders at the one-day event urged the travel sector to put pressure on the UK government to change its stance. The call was echoed last week
by Andrew Latham, chief executive of holiday deals website Icelolly, who wrote to trade partners urging them to back MP Sir Gerald
Howarth’s call for a revival of flights by writing to their MPs. “The trade continues to suffer
due to the lack of opportunity to sell the eastern Mediterranean, especially at this time of year,” he said. “I have written to a number of key MPs and our travel agent partners asking them to encourage the Foreign Office to lift the ban.” Speaking at ITCMS, Dr Taleb
Rifai, secretary-general of the UN World Travel Organisation, said David Cameron had been given assurances about safety at Sharm el-Sheikh airport. He said the former prime
minister while still in office had been assured the airport, which has been closed to UK carriers since the downing of a Russian Metrojet aircraft over a year ago, was now “safer than Heathrow”.
4
travelweekly.co.uk 17 November 2016 But he said Cameron was not
prepared to take the political risk and allow flying to resume. Dr Rifai warned the British
government is making the political situation worse by failing to support tourism and jobs in Egypt. “What’s happening in Egypt,
and Turkey, is a breeding nest for terrorism,” he said. “People are eager for tourists to come back. Wait another year, that’s too late: half of those jobless people are going to be recruited by Isis.” David Scowsill, president and
l Platinum sponsors were Abu Dbabi Tourism & Cultural Authority and TripAdvisor; Gold sponsors were AIG, Amadeus, Kenyon and Land Marshals.
l Find out more:
itcms.travel
chief executive of the World Travel & Tourism Council, agreed, saying people who had lost their jobs in Egypt were facing stark choices. “Young people are in danger of
being radicalised,” he said. “They cannot go east, west or south. So what do they do? They get in a boat and come to Europe. And some are dying in the process.” Scowsill said he was recently in
Egypt to inspect the $32 million upgrade of security at Egyptian airports by British experts and said “it looks pretty good”. “We need to put pressure on
the British government to change their view on this,” he added. “We are comfortable with what the Egyptian government has put in
place to protect British travellers.” › Talk Back, page 19 › ITCMS report, back page
PICTURE: SIMON HARVEY PHOTOGRAPHY
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