Summer 2021 has “come back in vogue” as consumer confidence grows, according to the boss of Blue Bay Travel.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast, recently-appointed chief executive Alistair Rowland said that most sales for October and November had been “for outside of date range” up to the end of 2022, but more recently, on the back of vaccine progress, more people had started booking 2021.
He also said the online travel agent and operator had been forced to widen its product range in line with market conditions and demand.
“The product areas Blue Bay was known for, Mexico and Caribbean, aren’t selling great. So even though Blue Bay is all about exclusive deals that are unbeatable in the market, actually, right now, it wouldn’t matter what kind of pricing you pushed out in those destinations,” he said.
“What we’ve had to do is extend ourselves to other destinations and The Indian Ocean is where it is. The Maldives and Mauritius are our best-selling destinations.”
Rowland, who took over at the helm of Blue Bay just over three months ago, said demand was stronger for special, bucket-list type holidays than for regulation bookings.
“What people wanted through October and November was something very significant to look forward to. A standard holiday is not what was selling well, but when you put in front of them an over-water villa with a water plane transfer in the Maldives for summer 2022, with a rate-hold into 2022, that sold brilliantly,” he said.
“I think the cheapest overwater villa deal, all-inclusive, was £1,399. So if you have exceptional value with a load of upgrades, that means your consumer can book for a fairly sensible level of deposit, and they’ve got something to look forward to, that’s what they’re buying and they are buying in significant numbers.”
Rowland said “speed to market” was another reason why Blue Bay had performed well in October and November.
“You’ve got to be very quick in terms of what you promote, and when and how. So social marketing is the most profitable channel and the quickest channel to market and you’ve got to link your hotel contracts to how you get your clients there.
“So an example of part of our success in November – and our November bookings doubled our October bookings in terms of number – was when Virgin Atlantic came out with a business class and first class sale, and many people took those as air fares and promoted them as air fares.
“We repackaged those and we pushed those out to our customer base directly through social marketing and also through the Co-op channel where we’re a supplier to the Co-op, within two and a half hours of that sale being launched.
“Because seats are at a premium, pushing those offers in front of the right consumer within 24 hours is really important. Otherwise, the seats would have gone. We were very successful on that campaign.”