THE day has finally arrived!
Yes, the make-up and pressed suits are being furiously prepared across Sydney (and the country) for the National Travel Industry Awards (NTIAs) tonight.
Travel’s night of nights promises to be bigger and better than any previous year, with ATIA CEO Dean Long speaking with my colleague Myles Stedman during the week about what to expect at the ICC Sydney this evening.
“This is the one night where we all come together and celebrate the best the industry has to offer…it doesn’t matter if you’re in cruise, it doesn’t matter if you’re in air, it doesn’t matter if you’re land, it doesn’t matter if you’re an agent,” Long said.
Last year the NTIAs were held in Melbourne as part of a commitment by ATIA to circulate the event to more audiences, and while Long was very pleased with how the event performed in the nation’s southern capital, he said it felt great to be back in Sydney where it has been hosted for so many years.
A reminder to our wonderful readers to keep up-to-date with all of the coverage in Travel Daily, Cruise Weekly and travelbulletin next week for the full wrap of who won and who wore it best, which will include a special edition to be published on Monday afternoon.
In further news, the inaugural Beyond Borders Travel Summit in Sydney yesterday also started with a bang, with Australian Travel Industry Association (ATIA) Chair Christian Hunter making a raft of major announcements under a newly unveiled Project A30.
ATIA described Project A30 as the culmination of a transformative three-year strategy that will better position the industry body to respond to the evolving challenges and opportunities faced by the Australian travel industry.
Heading up the big news was the rebranding of the ATAS accreditation scheme, which will be consolidated into the ATIA mainline brand and renamed ATIA Accredited. One of the major drivers of the decision was to simplify the accreditation process across the entire travel supply chain.
“This transition aims to strengthen consumer trust and create a trusted travel ecosystem that connects suppliers, agencies, and consumers more seamlessly,” Hunter told attendees.
ATIA CEO Dean Long added that, as opposed to 10 years ago, it makes less sense in today’s market to have a two-brand strategy when there is so much media exposure and advocacy work already going on under the ATIA brand.
“To not have the members benefit from having that investment that we are making every week in above-the-line commentary in the media…it really didn’t make much sense to continue a two-brand strategy,” Long told travelBulletin.
However, Long also stressed that the brand pivot in no way means that ATIA’s gold stamp of accreditation will offer less value moving forward.
“The program of ATAS will continue to be evolved, the code of conduct will still be in play, we will still be rejecting 25% that want to join, we will be maintaining those standards, but the brand will be ATIA Accredited,” Long confirmed.
ATIA will splash some solid marketing spend to ensure the message about the full value the new brand strategy will create is clearly communicated to the industry.
But the major changes didn’t stop there.
ATIA also confirmed it is currently reviewing ways to revive supplier and agency protection measures, with view to having a model ready for discussion by 2025.
Chief among these protections will be assisting accredited members with insurance against insolvency.
Hunter said that ATIA will be using insights gained over the last 10 years to form the new protection model, adding that in the future, it would examine expanding this to include suppliers that are ineligible to be accredited through ATIA.
The new program, which is yet to be named, will look to plug a gap left by the Travel Compensation Fund, which ceased in 2014 as part of the government deregulation of the industry.
ATIA also revealed it would be doing more to plug the skills gap in the travel sector.
While acknowledging that its new initiatives will not be able to make major gains overnight, ATIA said that workforce and retention of skilled workers remained a top priority for the industry’s long-term success.
To address this, new recruitment programs will aim to introduce young people to the diverse opportunities available in travel, including working with schools and educational institutions to highlight the variety of roles on offer in the industry.
A Travel Career Kickstart Training Program is the first component, delivering participants practical skills across everything from technology to front-line consulting. There will also be a pilot Gap Year Experience Program to provide a new pathway into the industry.
Meanwhile in other news developments, Helloworld’s ASX update came through on Friday, revealing that its business class TTV in Australia is up 2%, despite a 7% decline in overall air sales.
HLO CEO Andrew Burnes also announced a new division, My Way Travel & Events, which plans “to be the premier experience integration provider for ticketed sports and entertainment events globally”.
On Thursday afternoon, we sent a breaker on Rex’s plans to sell its Pel-Air Ambulance division for $47 million, helping to wipe away its secured debt.
In aviation news, we learned that Virgin’s velocity membership is undergoing a major shakeup, with the introduction of new lifetime status tiers, including ‘Forever Gold’ and ‘Platinum Plus’.
Rival Qantas also made waves, with the airline forecasting a 15% uplift in overall group international capacity for the full 2025-2026 year, while a 1% growth is predicted across domestic operations.
Interestingly, we noted that for the first time in history, Qantas shares went above $8 yesterday.
And speaking of the national carrier, it was with interest that we listened into the AIG Our Future Skies podcast this week where former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce emerged from the media darkness and into the spotlight again.
His reappearance, funnily enough, was timed just ahead of the launch of the book The Chairman’s Lounge on Monday, which is penned by the journalist that could possibly be described as his arch-nemesis, Joe Aston.
While it could have been expected that Joyce would look to land a first punch, as it were, it didn’t quite turn out to be like that. Joyce in part was quite complimentary about Qantas (the Qantas he led, anyway), but he did reveal a few big surprises.
For example, Qantas was seriously considering shutting down International, and that the Sydney to Frankfurt QF5/6 route was losing $50 million per annum. Our publisher Damian Francis took some notes on the podcast here and so long as the sky doesn’t fall in prior to Wednesday, will take a deeper dive on the Joyce podcast, the Aston book launch and the Qantas update in our regular Wednesday feature.
