Hays Travel owner Dame Irene Hays has said there are “fundamental changes” in the way holidaymakers are booking in the current market.
Speaking at the Hays Travel Independence Group conference, she described trading as “not by any means as bad” as could be expected bearing in mind economic forecasts and recent world events.
But while travel was still enjoying “strong demand”, Hays cited “significantly” more families booking holidays during non peak periods while more were choosing long-haul or cruise holidays due to “price erosion” with traditionally cheaper short-haul holidays.
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Hays said there was a “trueism” in recent statistics from Deloitte which showed 72% of parents were planning an overseas holidays with children this year, 63% of which intended to travel outside the key school holidays.
Last week Hays Travel sold more holidays for May and June than for July and August, she said.
She said: “From where we are sitting there are some fundamental changes in the way that our customers are booking holidays.
“It is true that significantly more parents today will be taking their children out of school than they have ever done before to book in off peak months.”
Hays described Deloitte’s figures as “telling” and cited them as evidence of a much starker shift than last year, when travel firms also saw increasing numbers of parents book termtime holidays after weighing up the cost of a school fine versus school holiday prices.
May and October this year were both “hugely popular” sales months with families for the Hays Travel group, she said, adding: “More parents are taking children out of school either side of the main school holidays.”
Comparable holiday prices for a short-haul holiday and a long-haul or cruise holiday were also changing the type of holidays families were booking, she said.
“It used to be only the wealthy could afford long-haul holidays,” she said, adding: “Price erosion between the two is encouraging people to travel further afield. The average expenditure for a family is increasing [and] the customer appetite for long-haul and cruise continues to grow.”
She gave the example of a seven-night stay in Rhodes at an all-inclusive property for a family of three in July 2025, priced at £5,698. In comparison, a similar stay in Mauritius for a family of three in July cost £5,359.
The company has already started to see a “migration” in the family market from land-based holidays to cruise as cruise lines become better at catering for families and used “innovative and disruptive” marketing campaigns to appeal to that market.
“The same applies to long-haul becoming more appealing to multigenerational families,” she said, noting that Hays Travel IG members were generally “much better” at selling long-haul holidays than Hays Travel’s retail division but “less so” when it came to cruise.
“For us as a business to be sustainable we need listen to customer sentiment,” she said.
The company has already outlined plans to sell more long-haul and cruise holidays so that each makes up a third of its sales alongside short-haul.
Hays insisted there were no plans to “aggressively” grow its own tour operation Vista as part of the changes to its product mix. “We don’t require our people to book Vista holidays, we listen to the customer to match them to the right holiday,” she said.
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