Hi Everyone,

 

A number of campaigners attended another Methanol Poisoning Roundtable on Monday 18th May where we had the opportunity to discuss how travel partners could support our mission to raise awareness of methanol poisoning in the UK.

 

A number of interesting ideas were discussed during the meeting which was  facilitated by MP's Tom Morrison and Jim Dickson, and included representatives from Airlines UK, Airports UK, FCDO, ABTA, Safer Tourism Foundation, as well as representatives from Heathrow Airport and Manchester Airport Group.

 

During this meeting, tannoy announcements were mentioned as a possible method of communicating key messaging about methanol poisoning which was encouraging. Wifi pop up window warning travellers about methanol poisoning was another suggestion from our campaign team which was taken on board by the Airport representatives to gather feedback on.

 

Another consideration was displaying warnings about methanol poisoning within Duty Free retailers.  Purchasing Duty Free spirits in the airport in the home destination is a much safer option than drinking spirits overseas and the airport representatives hope to gauge whether there is potential interest from retailers within Manchester Airport Group and Heathrow Airport.

 

The inclusion of overseas carriers into the wider discussion was also proposed by travel partners and we hope that they are able to explore this in time for our next meeting.

 

On the topic of travel insurance, it was noted that it would be a huge benefit for insurers to alert their customers to the dangers of consuming spirits overseas.  We hope to be able to invite the Association of British Insurers (ABI) to future meetings to discuss whether they may be able to warn their customers.

 

Overall, we felt that all travel partners were supportive of our mission to raise awareness about methanol poisoning and we hope that there may be some developments in the coming months.

 

A special thanks to the MP's Tom Morrison and Jim Dickson and their assistants who have done a lot of background work to organise these meetings. 

 

We look forward to seeing the FCDO methanol awareness campaign this summer.

 

Thank you again for supporting us.

 

Bethany