Independent bed bank Youhotels.com has seen summer sales for traditional destination favourties Spain and Portugal soar by 24% and 35% respectively.
Good value hotel prices and unrest in the Middle East and North Africa have helped to revive demand for Spain and Greece which, over recent years, have lost business to destinations outside the eurozone such as Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia, according to Youhotels sales and marketing director Paul Riches.
“It was a challenging winter for us due to the incidents and unrest in Egypt and Tunisia, which caused disruption of our customers’ holiday plans. However as a result of subsequent changes in bookings, the Canary Islands had a fantastic winter season – and it seems Spain remains favourite for summer bookings too.”
Greece and Portugal are also “early season winners,” according to Riches, with sales up 10% and 35% respectively for summer 2011.
Riches added: “Since the glut of bank holidays in Britain we have seen sales bounce back strongly – 25% up on booking levels just before the Easter weekend.”
Meanwhile, Rhodes Tourism has reported an 132% increase in the number of international arrivals to the island over the past month in comparison to April 2010. Tourists arriving in Rhodes with charter flights this April amounted to 67,692 compared to 42,495 for the same month in 2010.