Loveholidays chief believes OTA can become Europe’s number-one package holiday provider

The chief executive of loveholidays believes the online travel agency (OTA) can become Europe’s number-one package holiday provider as the company prepares to double its footprint across the continent.

 

Loveholidays, which was launched in 2012, now operates in five markets – the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands – and plans to expand its portfolio to 10 by the end of next year.

 

“We believe we can continue our expansion in markets where the digital penetration is a bit lower and where the package understanding is not as good as in the UK, which is the best market for packages,” said Donat Rétif, who joined the company in 2019.

 

When asked how Rétif will measure loveholidays’ growth across Europe, he added: “It could be in revenue or passengers, it doesn’t matter.”

 

Rétif described 2024 – when loveholidays made a profit of about £67m and carried about five million passengers – as a “great year” in which the OTA “grew each of our metrics by at least 20%”.

 

He said 2025 has continued in similar fashion but could not give specific figures because the company is weighing the possibility of a London IPO (initial public offering), which rules it out from disclosing such details, but he added: “I can confirm that we’re having a very strong year which will top last year.”

 

Rétif said there is no guarantee the stock market listing – which would likely value the company above £1bn – will reach completion because “the IPO market has been very difficult over the last few years”, but he expressed his confidence that it “could be a very good thing on multiple fronts”.

 

As well as setting his sights on making loveholidays Europe’s number-one package holiday provider, Rétif said there is no reason the OTA cannot become the largest Atol holder in the UK.

 

It currently sits in third place behind Jet2holidays and Tui, having increased its Atol provision by about a million passengers to 5,011,286 in the March 2025 renewals. The company is due to renew its Atol in the same month next year.

 

On Thursday (October 2), easyJet holidays increased its Atol by 400,000 and Tui added 90,000 to its licence in the September renewals, but Jet2holidays left its licence unchanged.

 

“We were the fifth-biggest Atol holder when I joined the business and we’re now number three, so why would we stop there? We will try [to become number one],” said Rétif.

 

But he added: “Jet2 and Tui are two very big businesses led by two very good people who know what they have to do. It’s not going to be easy [to overtake them], but it’s a good challenge.”

 

Rétif said he wants “every business in travel to do great” because “the more of us that are doing well, the better it is for the industry”.

 

The implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) across the business is the biggest obstacle facing loveholidays, believes Rétif, though he feels it is “an opportunity as much as a challenge”.

 

“It would be stupid to believe that it’s all going to be easy,” he said, speaking of AI’s integration.

 

“AI is a great way to amplify what we do so we don’t see it as a threat, but clearly it is changing the world and is going to have an impact on everyone’s behaviour.”

 

He added: “My concern is preparing everybody here to embrace it; we’ve asked everybody to integrate AI into their day-to-day jobs and we’re doing some big projects with AI which we’ll announce soon.”