The double bank holiday weekend in April appears to have boosted sales for holiday departures, defying the current state of the market and declining consumer confidence.
Easter and the Royal Wedding produce consecutive four-day weekends at the end of the month, with industry analyst GfK Ascent reporting an 8% year-on-year increase in bookings for departures in April.
This is some way ahead of the market for summer 2011, which begins for tour operators and travel retailers on May 1 and is trading near flat after a promising start to the year.
Family holiday bookings for April departures are 44% up on April 2010 – a remarkable increase given the pressure on household income.
Both growth figures are for bookings to the end off March, so do not include late sales.
However, any assessment of the trend and of the wider state of the market is complicated. Easter fell early in the same month last year with Easter Monday on April 5 – meaning a proportion of
Easter holiday departures last year would have fallen at the end of March. At the same time the 2010 bookings figure would have included late sales – often a significant proportion of the total.
A minority of potential travellers over Easter 2010 may have postponed departures because of strikes by British Airways cabin crew.
However, the figures are free of the single-biggest distorting factor in any year-on-year comparison between April 2010 and this year – the volcanic ash crisis. This occurred in mid-April and had no bearing on booked departures for the month to the end of March.
Look out for more details of the current state of the market in TWbusiness:am and in Travel Weekly on Thursday.