Travel News March 2022
TRADE NEWS 41
NITN EXCLUSIVE: INTERVIEW WITH ADVANTAGE TRAVEL PARTNERSHIP CEO JULIA LO BUE-SAID
NI Travel News’ Jonathan Adair spoke with Julia Lo Bue-Said to talk all things travel and to hear what Julia believes travel will look like in the near future for Northern Ireland, Europe and the world...
What is your opinion on how things are in regards to covid-19 currently?
“Things are much better. It has ben two years of absolute dissemination for the industry and for a lot of independent travel agents it has been a really, really difficult period. We are absolutely getting to a point now where we are starting to see that light at the end of the tunnel; agents are starting t to feel a lot more optimistic , they are selling holidays, they are booking travel, which a year ago no one was really doing so definitely in the right direction. To think that we are now out of it, to think that everything is suddenly ok is a complete disillusion and that is something I still try and be very vocal of, in terms of the media activity we do and our lobbying is that, don’t think for one second that travel is back to normal because there still is a long way to go. I think that for a lot of travel agents, they have a lot of debt now, they have staff shortages. For a lot of local members, they have a lot of issues around Brexit to deal with, the EU to deal with, and the whole devolved nation approach; it always seems to fall a couple of weeks behind what we see happening in Westminster so there are local issues, but there is a lot of macro issues that we still need to be aware of and remember that we still are not out of it yet. “ From a local perspective from your Northern Irish travel agents, what is the feedback from them in regards to the pandemic recovery? “We have got a significant number of members in
Northern Ireland and we have been engaging with them right the way through the past couple of years, and we have been up to Northern Ireland and myself and my team have spent time with our members and that has continued and really tried to support them as much as we can. However, business does follow the same macro trends we are seeing across the country . The difference being is the timing; the trends are always a couple of week behind Westminster and when we see the messages of Westminster, we always automatically see a real swing in behaviour in terms of booking patterns. In Northern Ireland we see, unfortunately because of how the government situation is, lag behind and we will see that a couple of weeks later. So members are in a much better place, they are very much optimistic. There is challenges in different sector, like cruise in Northern Ireland that’s tough, that’s still really difficult and we are trying to work with members around how they can, at this moment and time, consider selling different product , how can we help them with that, so yeah. It is positive and optimistic but there still is challenges down the road.
What do you think needs to happen now to give people that confidence to travel again? “ I think it is a number of things; from an overall UK perspective, we need to think about relaxing domestic regulations at an international level. Whilst it is easier to travel back to the UK if you’re vaccinated, it is not
if you’re not. Children can be a bit of a challenge as well and depends and where you’re traveling to, so we need more harmonisation. We need to get back to frictionless travel. There are people who will not travel if they need to wear masks on planes, if they need to fill out a passenger locator form. I know members who are literally buying smart phones for their customers so they can then help them with their passenger locator form; that is not travel. The problem we have got is actually we have got used to travelling under really odious restrictions and uit kind of feels like it is ok now because there is restrictions but it is not too bad, so we have got to get back to frictionless travel, we have got to see travel back to the UK first, because that is what we can control, free’er. We need to see people travelling back without the need of a passenger locator form and if you’re unvaccinated, given all the lessons and data we know now, there shouldn’t have to still pay for onerous and expensive testing. That has to be the next marker in the sand in terms of where we get to. “We need to see more countries opening up; most of the world is still closed. Asia is still closed. Those that are opened, you still have to quarantine for 5,6,7 days so there is a long way to go. We need to see more harmonisation, we hope that the international collaboration that has happened and that is going on across governments continues and that has got to continue at pace. However, there are many challenges before we get to where we need to be but I am hopeful that every week that goes past, in the next couple of weeks, we are going to get close to that. We are going to get close to a time where we can travel in a manner we were used to travelling in pre-pandemic and that shouldn’t be too far away.”
“we have seen the share in the travel community as
booking increase, so we have seen more consumers going for an agent, we have seen more benefits around the booking with a travel agent and that is coming through louder and louder now so whilst the overall market clearly is still down and is still only trading
Advantage TravelPartnership CEO Julia Lo Bue-Said
around 60% of pre-pandemic levels, we are seeing more of that coming in to travel agents which is one of the really positive aspects coming out of the last couple of years; From my point of vie ,the consumer really now understands the value and the benefit of booking through a travel agent and long may that continue. It gives travel agent , whether leisure travel agents who are huge opportunity to really galvanise a publicity that has been build and that support and just make sure they’re going for it; that is what I like to say to my members, just go for it. There is pent up demand, people do what to travel and we have just got to show then and encourage them to book through the right means.”
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