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health and safety, and training people to sell excursions. It also taught me about teamwork, compassion and how local people you work with are crucial to helping smooth operations. After nine years, I relocated to the UK.
Angie Hills MBE
Abta’s head of destinations tells Samantha Mayling about her 36-plus years in travel – and being awarded an MBE
Q. How did you get into travel? I was a hairdresser and decided I didn’t want to do it any more. A colleague of a friend worked at Gatwick, managing Tour Reps, and had a vacancy… so I went to work there in 1988. One day, I helped a gentleman who’d missed his flight – he was a director at Redwing [later First Choice] and told his HR department I should work for them. I went to their head office after my shift and three days later, in May 1989, I flew to Corfu to commence my overseas tour rep role.
Q. What was it like as a rep? For nine years, I had summers in predominantly Greece and Cyprus, and winters in Majorca and Tunisia. I was in Tunisia when the first Gulf War started in 1990. We had to conduct an evacuation. We didn’t have mobile phones – it was ticker tape and Telex. That was the first crisis I dealt with. Over the years, I was promoted to senior rep, head rep, then resort manager. It gave me a huge amount of knowledge because you do everything from operations, customer support, crisis response,
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Q. When did you move to Abta? On my first day [with another company], somebody handed me an advertisement for a job with the Federation of Tour Operators, as health safety and operations manager. I had an interview with the FTO that evening and was offered the job. I worked at the FTO from 1998 until we merged with Abta in 2008. The merger was a perfect fit and meant we could provide services for a broader number of members. Abta’s health and safety technical guide has been a labour of love since I joined the FTO. It was one of my first tasks. Hoteliers were a bit confused about different health and safety criteria. The first guide was a pilot exercise in 2019… it is now on its fifth edition. We’re never going to eradicate every trip, slip or accident, but if suppliers can demonstrate they’ve taken all reasonable care to keep people safe, that’s a good place. Our health and safety committee and operational committees are great frameworks, because the members share information and come up with a common approach to resolving situations. I am also proud of the Up to Champions programme, empowering local people, with training programmes on health and safety, food safety management and risk management.
Q. Tell us about your honours and awards. Nikki White, my director at the time, and I were awarded commendations by the Metropolitan Police in recognition of the work Abta and its members did in relation to international counterterrorism. It’s tinged with sadness, because it’s a byproduct of the Sousse terror attack in Tunisia [2015]; there was a huge review about how to make people more aware about terrorism. Being in the 2025 and 2024 Women in Trade Associations Powerlists is fabulous, a lovely accolade – I see us as a collective, a real team. I lead an all-woman team, and they’re marvellous. That’s why I’m so proud of the MBE; it’s an amazing honour and a privilege to be recognised in the King’s New Year Honours list. It is testament to what the industry and Abta are doing. No two days are the same. That is what keeps the job so fresh.
Q. Where do you go on holiday?
My sister and I love Christmas markets, and I love cities, such as New York, for a few days’ sightseeing and shopping – and beach holidays to relax. I’ve got lots of friends around the world, so I visit them. I went to Geneva just before Christmas. I’m going to a new area in France over Easter, to see a friend and, at least once a year, I go to Cyprus as one of my best friends lives there. I’ve also taken my dad to Australia and Canada, as mum didn’t want to go. Living near London, I often see West End shows and I travel around the UK to see friends.
HOW DID YOU COPE WITH MAJOR CRISES?
With Covid, it was about
providing information, advice and support to members. When lockdown happened, we were never busier. We had a grid with every single travel advice and restriction. As an industry,
we did a brilliant job under very difficult circumstances. With the Boxing Day tsunami [2004], we didn’t have social media but with the Japanese tsunami [2011], we were watching it on television as the wave sadly struck the country. You get better intelligence more quickly. The most challenging storm was Wilma [2005] which sat over the Yucatan peninsula for three days. We tried to find alternative airports. Members were shuttling people to the Dominican Republic, so planes could bring them home. It’s about how destinations collaborate. With the ash cloud [2010], we joined calls with Nats, aviators and managing directors from airline organisations. My colleague asked: “Can you underfly the cloud?” The call went silent, and then suddenly the aviators said they could see if this could happen. Nobody had thought of it – and they found they could fly under the cloud for a time before going higher.
Afternoon tea to celebrate being awarded an MBE
travelweekly.co.uk
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