By Dean Long, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Federation of Travel Agents
And just like that we’re in December.
It’s been a busy month and I and the team have been out and about catching up with members. It was an honour for myself and Compliance Manager Nina Hedges to attend Travellers Choice conference in Melbourne and meet face to face with so many members. AFTA Vice Chair and Travellers Choice Managing Director Christian Hunter made the observation that there’s a ‘travel at any cost’ consumer mindset with consumers happy to stick their hands in their pockets to offset pent-up wanderlust.
That’s definitely a sentiment that members across the board are reporting along with frustration at the ongoing inflated price of airfares, lack of frequency and constrained capacity. AFTA continues to make representations to the key decision makers in Government with considered policy requests to support the entire travel sector.
Given the toll during the pandemic on businesses including in our sector, it’s worth noting that Anywhere Travel celebrated 40 years in business and Goldman 60 years. If you’ve got a significant milestone anniversary coming up, please share with us at AFTA. Now more than ever more, it’s important that we do celebrate business success.
AFTA is already working on several major initiatives and innovations which we will announce and launch in 2023. It’s going to be one hell of a year – in the best sense possible and we can’t wait!
