Following the recent security scares, easyJet has announced that it has been hit by £4m in lost revenue and compensation, with flag carrier BA putting the cost of flight disruption at £40m. These are sizable amounts in any context and must inevitably result in increased future ticket costs. Plus of course there was the impact on travellers with restrictions on hand baggage, extended check-in times and, immediately after the scare, extensive delays and cancellations.

On a recent holiday to Italy, both going out and coming back, I experienced long queues and individual searching of hand baggage, none of which contribute to a good experience as part of your holiday. There were also considerable differences between Scotland and Italy about what could and could not be carried on board as hand luggage. For example in Scotland no cosmetics could be taken on board – and that included lipstick! In Italy there were restrictions on liquids and everything was security screened, but my lippie stayed in my handbag!

This made me think that the whole heightened state of alert had something of a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to it. Little or no consideration appears to have been given to the likelihood of this kind of scenario by either the government, the airport owners or indeed the airlines themselves. Had some kind of contingency been in place then surely the disruption would have been minimised and a more managed approach might have been more apparent.

This is not just happening in the UK. In the US last year, there had been dire warnings about the potential catastrophic effects of a major hurricane and when Katrina hit – there was chaos.

Last month in Greece, forest fires raging out of control forced the evacuation of parts of the holiday resort area of Halkidiki. And yet Greece regularly gets forest fires – so why the surprise and lack of action plan? By comparison, London is reckoned to have coped well through the events of July 7 last year and the reason was, it had a scenario plan in place.

This year’s autumn conference ‘Rising to the Challenge’ will look at various areas that offer a potential challenge but will also offer solutions to these. The opening presentation of the conference will be from Riddell Graham, the VisitScotland director of strategy, partnership and communications, who will consider how to plan for the unexpected and manage those external threats! Invites will be going out next week with full details of speakers and topics so look out for those in the post.

We operate in a changing and challenging environment – we need to be ready and that means thinking about what we might need to do.

Eva McDiarmid