EasyJet Holidays is to delay its expansion into ski and new European source markets due to current poor trading conditions.
The tour operator, which has just started selling its packages through independent travel agents, said it would continue to focus on its beach and city packages and on its UK customers in the short term.
Chief executive Garry Wilson, speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast, said: “We had planned that we would look to launch some kind of ski product for this winter but we have put that on ice.
“We want to focus on city and beach product. We need to make sure we optimise that ex-UK and beach and city product; we are a new product and will still grow.”
He said the company would review expansion for 2021 and move into new source markets in 2022.
Wilson said the tour operator has also dropped hotels which do not meet its Covid-secure guidelines or have shut and do not currently have a reopening date, but said: “We have worked with hotels over the last few months to ensure guidelines for the hotels we work with are being met. In terms of the number of hotels for next year we have not reduced this dramatically.”
He added that the policy of hotels to work with one tour operator partner on an exclusive basis was likely to change in future because of the risk this entailed.
In reference to Thomas Cook, which worked exclusively with many hoteliers prior to its collapse, he said: “Many hoteliers who were left high and dry [after Cook’s failure] and then found new contracts, will have been hit a second time [by the Covid pandemic]. This [pandemic] has to change their business models.
“The old model of hotels giving their whole hotel stock to one partner to distribute will become a thing of the past very quickly. I think they will try to have as wide a distribution as they can.”
