WTTC asks for Government Action

We see the The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) is wading in and demanding action to safeguard the health of the travel and tourism economy in light of continued travel disruption caused by volcanic ash.

“While public safety must be paramount, decisions must not be made lightly as they can have serious impact on the $5.75 trillion travel and tourism economy,” said Jean-Claude Baumgarten, WTTC’s president and CEO. “Although it represents 9.2 percent of world GDP and employs 235 million people worldwide, its influence on nearly every facet of our lives is rarely appreciated by governments until a crisis occurs. A coordinated approach to assessing the situation and implementing recovery measures is crucial for the sake of travelers and business alike.”

Baumgarten called for more attention to aviation, which is just beginning to recover from 9/11 and the global recession. Airlines face the double whammy of loss of business coupled with compensation costs for stranded passengers. Baumgarten said it is too early to know the full extent of economic damage the volcano has caused airlines. He said that a series of events -- 9/11, SARS, swine and avian flu, tsunamis, earthquakes and now a volcano -- have affected travel in the past decade. And legislation that could help the industry recover its losses is controlled through many different places and sometimes restricts trade rather than benefits it.

Governments must now intervene as the financial burden of the current crisis is too great for the private sector to bear, Baumgarten said. “It is time for governments and organizations such as the United Nations, European Commission, G8 and G20 to re-examine the way policies that affect global travel and tourism are coordinated and implemented,” he said. An important step forward, said Baumgarten, would be the introduction of centralized air traffic control for the whole of Europe, which could reduce the need for blanket bans on flights in the future.

Now the bankers are sitting pretty again and rebuilding their balance sheets, it's time to help the travel business which has for too long been ignored by the EU and Governments alike.