Great Little Breaks is encouraging travel agents to promote breaks for next year as something for clients ‘to look forward to’ after lockdown.
The domestic tour operator said more than half of its bookings were now coming from the trade after agents refocused sales efforts on the UK market instead of overseas.
The hotel package specialist, which started proactively selling through the trade in January this year, had only targeted to get around 20% of sales through the trade at this point. It has previously said it hoped to reach 50% by around the middle of next year.
Director of trade relations Chris Cundall said agent sales had beaten all expectations.
He said: “Since August it’s been around 50% which was a total shock for us; we didn’t think we would get anywhere near that but agents have started to look at the UK as a safe destination. We had our best-ever month in August and best-ever September.”
The operator said it was now encouraging agents to focus on 2021. “Our message to agents is to book something to look forward to next year. We have extended availability to next summer so we’re hoping their clients will book something now to look forward to,” he said.
He added: “We’ve had good feedback that hotels in the UK have handled Covid really well from a hospitality point of view and have got Track and Trace in place.”
Many agents which have never sold domestic breaks have started to work with the operator during the pandemic, said Cundall, helping them to gain revenue while many overseas destinations have been off the government’s ‘safe destination’ list.
He said: “We’ve had some amazing support from agents, who have been sharing our offers. We have 300 to 400 agents since August who have continued to book with us and have started to sell the UK to get some cash in the bank.”
The operator said news of the second England lockdown had meant staff had to work extra hours, including days off and evenings, to amend or cancel bookings affected over the next month.
The operator had 650 customers due to go on its hotel breaks over the next two weeks alone. November is traditionally a quieter month but, according to Cundall, bookings had been far higher this year due to pent-up demand.
It had already been under pressure to rebook customers after regional tiers were introduced in England by the government and affected those due to stay in areas such as Manchester.
Cundall added: “We have been working on our days off and evenings. We put a message out on social on Sunday after news of the lockdown to let agents and customers know we would call them. Agents are quite used to this now.”
As well as some clients bringing forward shopping breaks to go before the lockdown started, many agents persuaded clients to amend rather than cancel. Around 40% of bookings so far have been amended, with many changing to travel in December.
“Agents are really pushing for amendments and thankfully lots of them are amending. My worry is how many times customers will amend their stays if they extend the lockdown into December and they can’t go before Christmas,” admitted Cundall.
The operator plans to put train packages on sale and offer a range of London hotel packages but said the product expansion had been delayed over recent months. Train packages were due to go live at the end of the summer.