Graham Barnes is Chairman of the ABTECH project. ABTECH's remit is to accelerate the adoption and use of appropriate IT solutions into the UK travel industry with special emphasis on the ABTA membership of 2000 tour operators and travel agents. This positioning puts him firmly in the middle ground between sector suppliers and their customers. ABTECH organises open issue-based conferences on topics of relevance to the European travel industry, which have a reputation for interactive, insightful coverage of topical issues.
Barnes is also retained as a consultant by ABTA and sits on the Steering Group for abta.com, ABTA's award-winning consumer-facing web site of which he is Chief Architect. abta.com is being developed as an online marketing channel for ABTA members, mobilising information about ABTA members competences and services and presenting it to consumers.
Outside of the ABTECH project Barnes works with IT solutions companies and with individual travel companies, a number of which retain his services on an ongoing basis. He has also been a specialist judge for the Travel Weekly Agency Achievement Awards in e-commerce for four years.
Barnes holds a Ph D in Computer Science and was previously Technical Director and then Strategic Planning Director at
British Airways subsidiary TAS where he was part of the UK team that worked on the blueprint for the Galileo GDS. He was also Director of ICIA (the UK electronic publishers
association) and its Chairman from 1994-97, representing the association on the EC project ADMEDIA (exploring the impact of new media/internet on advertising).
ABTECH c/o TLI,
The Slade Centre, The Square, Gillingham, Dorset, SP8 4AR
tel: +44(0) 1747 821480/ 821490
