High demand for holiday homes

A UK booking site has said that 60 per cent of its holiday homes are already booked up for the most popular weeks this summer.

Independent Cottages said it has had three times the number of enquiries during this third coronavirus lockdown compared to the first in March last year.

As well as this, the site has recorded an “unusually high demand” for Christmas.

This comes after the news that holiday bookings were up in June near Carbis Bay and St Ives following the news that the G7 conference would be held there.

Many of the hotels in the area had few rooms, and those which were left in some places had doubled in price.

The news from Independent Cottages shows the surge in bookings goes beyond just the time around the conference and that people are looking for holidays.

Steve Jarvis, co-founder of Independent Cottages, said at the end of January: “Even though we’re still only in the first month of the year some of our more popular areas are already booked up. Ever-popular family destinations such as Cornwall have very few prime weeks available, with around 60% of properties already booked up for popular summer weeks.”

The company added that the surge might be to do with uncertainty surrounding the rules about international travel this year, with ‘ staycations ‘ becoming more reliable, and thus more popular. Another reason is the number of people who are rebooking as a result of cancelled holidays in the past 12 months.