Flight bookings take off as hopes rise for summer sunshine breaks
TRAVEL firms reported a foreign holidays booking bonanza yesterday amid hopes breaks abroad can go ahead this summer.
Tui, the UK’s largest tour operator, recorded a six-fold increase in bookings following the publication of the Prime Minister’s roadmap for lifting lockdown on Monday.
Greece, Spain and Turkey were the most popular destinations, with bookings for those destinations up 500 per cent. It was the firm’s busiest day for more than a month.
Package holiday giant Jet2.com also reported a surge in bookings, which it said were up 600 per cent. Spain, Greece and Cyprus were among the most-booked destinations.
Steve Heapy, the chief executive of Jet2.com, said: ‘The surge in bookings shows how ready our customers are to get away to the sunshine.’ A new travel taskforce will report to ministers on April 12 on when international travel can re-start. Despite this, easyJet also reported soaring bookings. Yesterday it said flight bookings had increased 337 per cent, while package deals were up 630 per cent week on week. Spanish destinations were among the most popular, including Malaga, Alicante and Palma, while bookings poured in for Faro in Portugal and the Greek island of Crete. The firm also launched sales for 19million seats on more 110,000 flights for spring 2022, more flights and holidays than the airline has ever put on a year early before.
EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren said: ‘This signal from the Government that it plans to reopen travel has been what UK consumers have been waiting for.’
Europe’s biggest budget airline, Ryanair, said it had seen ‘a large surge in bookings from the UK to destinations in Spain, Greece and Italy’.
Meanwhile, online travel firm Thomas Cook said traffic to its website was up 60 per cent.
Its chief executive, Alan French, said the roadmap was ‘good news’ and that bookings were ‘flooding in’ for countries like Greece, Cyprus, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
He said: ‘While we await more details, it’s clear the government’s ambition is to open up international travel and hopefully in time for the summer holidays.’
Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency and co-founder of the Save Our Summer campaign, which called for a May travel re-start, said: ‘Sales have started to soar again as some consumers start spending their wall of money stored up for overseas travel.’
Amanda Matthews, managing director and owner of luxury travel agency network Designer Travel, said her firm saw double the usual number of enquiries on Monday.
Meanwhile, UK-based private jet broker, PrivateFly, said inquiries were up 184 per cent up on the same day last year, while bookings were up 150 per cent.
CEO Adam Twiddell said: ‘Yesterday was our busiest day of the month so far, with inquiry levels well over double the same day last year.’
Charters to Ibiza and Malaga in Spain, Santorini in Greece and Split in Croatia were among the most popular.
However, some in the industry urged caution given the travel restrictions in place and the difficulty officials will face in unpicking them completely in
‘Spending their wall of money’ ‘Busiest day of the month’
the coming months. For instance, some countries may remain closed to Britons if they have not vaccinated enough of their own populations.
Popular destinations are also currently subject at any moment to being added to the ‘red list’ of countries where worrying new variants have been discovered.
Testing will almost certainly remain a requirement for many destinations too and for those who have not been vaccinated, potentially adding hundreds of pounds to the cost of getaways.
Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel, said: ‘Anyone considering booking a holiday abroad in the near future should proceed with caution.
‘If you do book, only use providers that offer flexible booking policies, and where appropriate, book a package holiday as these come with stronger consumer protections.’