Coughed up the ash and back to business as usual!

As I write this blog, I am flying on a BA flight to Barcelona on a business trip. The flight is full and the cabin crew are smiling. It is incredible that an airline with such troubles has nonetheless such support from its loyal travellers, who continue to book BA as well as support from their staff. Companies suffering from strikes are prohibited from taking on temps by law. Therefore, BA could only rely on the support of cabin crew volunteers. As a result, BA managed to fly an impressive 80% of flights despite the strike. BA spoke at the recent ABTA Travel Matters Conference and reported multi million pound losses for the last two years. It is only common sense that more than just cabin crew jobs will be put in jeopardy if strikes continue and sales suffer as a result.

The well attended ABTA conference was in fact up beat about the future of travel. The global recovery in Asia is creating a lot of business travel and this is certainly noticed by our business travel recruitment team, who have expanded by two more Recruitment Consultants this year to cater for the upturn in business travel vacancies. I also read in City AM that IATA reports a profit forecast for airlines by the end of this year despite the ash chaos.

The conference economist also hinted that the Euro may crash soon and that countries such as Spain and Italy will revert to their own currency. However, if this happens, holidays will be much cheaper to these favourite destinations.

The economist mentioned the up and coming public sector spending cuts and the impact this will have. Budgets for the ‘Back to Work’ programme and ‘Backing Young Britain’ programme are under threat of suspension or being axed. The Back to Work programme, which New Frontiers has been involved in by helping unemployed people improve their CVs and job searching skills, has over spent their budget by four times. It seems the government set £3 million as a budget, but no one monitored it and suddenly £12 million has been spent! Not surprisingly, this initiative is being re-evaluated. The Backing Young Britain scheme, which started in March 2010 is still continuing, but we don’t know for how much longer. The scheme is designed to help young people improve their skills and find work. The government will continue to pay 18-24 year olds their job seekers allowance, while they work for companies for 13 week placements at no cost to the companies. New Frontiers helps travel companies to access this scheme. We will be running a free HR seminar on 21st June 2010 in London – go to http://www.newfrontiers.co.uk/travel/client/hr-club.aspx so that companies can learn more about the latest government grants and free staffing initiatives. These government grants are always coming and going, so it’s important to be quick to take advantage of initiatives which are helpful to your business and the people it intends to help.

New Frontiers are pleased to report upbeat trading for June, which is a good sign that the industry has coughed up the ash cloud and soldiered on to ensure holiday makers get their well deserved break. Holidays, as revealed by the ABTA conference, are now to be considered a human right!

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