Libra Holidays has halved its capacity and dropped Dubai, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey from its programmes to focus on restoring the profitability to its business.
Sales and marketing manager Riccardo Benzo said the operator is focusing on its core destinations of Greece, Cyprus and Egypt following its partial sale by the Libra Holidays Group to private investor Allbury, which now owns 60% of the company. In November 2007 Libra was faced with a number of financial difficulties.
Benzo added it is hoped that reducing the number of destinations and dropping this year’s capacity to around 100,000 passengers will be enough to ensure the operator a safe future.
He said: “It is the right time to go back to what we are known for. Last year we had a much bigger commitment on flights so we ended up doing a lot of seat-only sales in the [less-profitable] lates market but this year we have halved our commitments with the airlines.
“We’re being realistic and working hard to reach targets. We want to make money and we want agents to make money, which you don’t get from selling last-minute deals and flights. We are focusing on early sales, good-value propositions and better properties.”
Benzo said to drive profitability on the programme the operator has also added around 60 three, four and five-star properties to the programme to attract bigger-spending customers.
Libra has launched its 2008/09 brochure with around 60 new three, four and five-star properties in order to attract more of the top-end market.