The Travelling Blackberries

One of the things you would probably expect at an ABTA convention is a lot of travel agents. ABTA is, after all, the Association of British Travel Agents. Going by the list of delegates at the Palma thrash (around 800 or so), I would guess that only around an eighth were in fact from travel agencies. ABTA isn't just about travel agents as it is "The Travel Association" and so includes tour operators as well, and the line between a travel agent and a tour operator can blur, but the attendees seemed to overwhelmingly come from other parts of the travel world. Many of them were those, like me, who talk about travel and tourism. The convention is a great occasion for talking shop among those who do a lot of talking anyway.

Given the uneven distribution in terms of those who do and those who don't do - arranging holidays or travel, that is - what is the point of it all? There is of course the "networking" defence, sometimes known as getting to know people, and this getting to know tends to involve excruciating conversations littered with business newspeak. "We can envision synergetic windows of opportunity going forward" or some such tosh.

There is the chance to learn new jargon in this newspeak world. I noted down the term "disintermediating". I haven't a clue what it means, but I intend to use it regularly in future; you've been warned.

But a more important point of it all is, as has been the case ever since the conference or convention (call it as you wish) was hit upon as being a "good idea", that it's a bit of a jolly. Even in economically-straitened times, and by God, didn't we hear about how straitened these times have become and will become, there has to be an opportunity for the travel community to let its hair down and to fire off images of it doing so thanks to the latest gadgetry.

I well remember the jolly and the times when conferences were two a penny. One week New Orleans, the next Milan. New Orleans, in between Henry Kissinger asking me what I was doing having come from England to attend a management conference in Louisiana, was a fine excuse for hitting the blues and jazz bars of Bourbon Street. Milan involved a do at Armani's gaffe. Not his house as such, but the Armani HQ emporium. And there was the great man himself, who wasn't so great as he is a shorthouse, who insisted on making a gift to all attendees at his special dinner of a bottle of the Armani house liqueur, a truly revolting and undrinkable concoction made out of rose petals.

But those were in the days before we we had ever heard of carbon footprints and before the technology arrived that was meant to put an end to all the need to jump on BA and hack across the Atlantic or to climb aboard the O'Leary Express and hop off to Palma. Despite the technology, it still happens, and can be put down to one thing - the industry that is MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions). If it weren't to exist, then Palma's brand new (if and when it's completed) Palacio de Congresos would be an even greater waste of money than it will prove to be anyway.

Though ABTA's convention seemed primarily to be a junket for members of the media and for the new-age travel service providers of the internet (and of course smartphones), it would be a curious thing were there not to be a convention that involved some travel. This is what ABTA does, or at least what its members facilitate. A travel association that didn't actually travel anywhere would be setting a bad example to all those who really need to, as in holidaymakers.

You have to conclude, therefore, that this, over and above the jolly, is the main point of it all. The travel itself. We are a travel association, therefore we travel. All aboard the ABTA Airbus and off we go, a band not of Traveling Wilburys but of Travelling Blackberries; have smartphone, will travel.

All the technology, Google's "Goggles", social networking (that word again) with crazed movements of thumbs and fingers on a small phone keyboard, uploading and sharing every waking moment; it makes you wonder if the day of the virtual tourist is nearly upon us. You will never need to leave the house in order to experience the holiday experience; all that's missing is something like Aldous Huxley's "feelies". They'll be here, though. One day. And then we really wouldn't need to go on holiday and never need to travel. But I tell you something, there would still be a convention in order that we can all talk about it.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.