Juliet Dennis and Natasha Salmon
Idle Travel enjoyed a record‑breaking sales day after using one of Jet2holidays’ co‑branded mobile trailers.
The Bradford agency reported bookings revenue up by more than 200% on January 28 on the comparable Saturday last year, with triple the number of passengers booked to travel.
It comes as the trade continues to smash sales targets nationwide.
Idle Travel director Tony Mann said sales were ‘unbelievable’, with the mobile agency giving ‘fantastic access’ to more customers.
He said: “Despite being based in the town for 30 years, some people saw us for the first time. Our store is in a shopping complex but having the Jet2holidays trailer in a prominent position outside a supermarket was fantastic for us.”
Agents nationwide have reported record-breaking sales in January.
Analyst GfK said the overall market for this summer was 5% up on 2016 to the week ending January 28. Summer bookings for the last full week of January were in fact 5% down on the comparable 2016 week, but this was against a particularly strong performance for the same week in 2016, up 7% on the comparable week in 2015.
Hays Travel managing director John Hays said trading meetings had been “celebratory and emotional” with many branches “passing stretch targets”.
He added: “For a lot of our mature branches it will be the biggest month they’ve had in their history.”
Alresford Travel manager Paul Gilmour said January was his agency’s best month in seven years.
“People are not making money on their savings and they are looking at exchange rates and saying they won’t improve so they might as well just book,” he said.
Miles Morgan Travel owner Miles Morgan said: “It’s been the best month ever in the history of our business. It mystifies me why it has been so buoyant when there is so much bad news in the world.
“It is possible there’s a bit of a ‘buy or lose out’ awareness.”