Former Global Business Travel Association executive director
Mike McCormick and former GBTA chief technology officer Ed Silver today launched
Travel Again, which they hope will become a cross-industry advocacy
organization designed to standardize broad travel industry recovery efforts,
provide research and data to its members, advocate for government policy and
programs and drive traveler confidence back into the market as the industry
finds its way back from the Covid-19 crisis. The nascent self-funded venture
currently is set up as a limited liability company but with ambitions to garner
members across the spectrum of the travel industry and eventually to file for
nonprofit 501c3 status.
McCormick told BTN that as he spoke to industry leaders
early in the summer, many commented on the fragmented survival and recovery efforts
across travel industry verticals. There are ongoing lobbying efforts, for
example, from organizations like American Hotel & Lodging Association, Airlines
4 America, GBTA, American Society of Travel Advisors and the U.S. Travel
Association. Some organizations banded together at the beginning of the
Covid-19 crisis to align their voices, but others did not. There remains plenty
of work from airlines and other travel suppliers to buttress their finances and
try to find onramps back to some level of operation, but McCormick said the
industry needs a more cohesive strategy to position itself for real recovery.
"A lot of the efforts were short-term focused because
so many were in survival mode," said McCormick. "There needed to be
some ways to pull together and coordinate a lot of the efforts across the
industry… to impact outcomes."
Travel Again aims to identify the through lines of various
industry efforts, implement standards and amplify messaging both to government
and to the market. Among the organization's first efforts is the Traveler
Confidence Index, a monthly data project which will track sentiment across all
types of travelers. McCormick said the group would issue the first iteration in
a matter of weeks. Tracking confidence is a key benchmark that will benefit all
sectors of the industry and one that "if we can focus on together as an
industry, we can get a better result," he said.
McCormick isn't under any false perceptions about where the
industry stands in relation to actual recovery. "Until we have vaccines,
we aren't ready for widespread [travel]," he said. "But we have a
period where we can work on a lot of things and put programs in place across
the industry and work with government to lower barriers appropriately. If we do
that, it will not only help the short term but set us up for long-term recovery
and ready to accelerate out."
McCormick emphasized that Travel Again wasn't
looking to compete with organizations like USTA or GBTA, which already coordinate
and lobby on behalf of the travel industry. Rather it aims to pull leaders from
all sectors and all geographies to think bigger about recovery. The
organization is highly conceptual at launch. It has no current members, but
McCormick and Silver are hoping to convert quickly.