Welcome to a new year, one that I hope will be successful and profitable for you all.
Due to the operating hours of our printers, I am writing this just before Christmas, so I also hope that the past week has been a peaceful and uneventful one.
In the last edition of Travel Weekly in 2013, I wrote about the outlook for the next 12 months, and the opportunities there could be to do strong business and benefit from growing consumer confidence.
We can also hope that the high-profile turn-of-year marketing campaigns from some of the industry’s biggest companies will be a timely nudge for customers.
There are some variables on the horizon, of course, and it will be interesting to see what impact the World Cup in Brazil has on bookings. In the past, a World Cup with England involved has always seen bookings slow to a dribble – until the inevitable happened and they were knocked out.
Now, the prevalence of digital communications and satellite television means there is absolutely no reason why football fans need to be in their own armchairs to keep up with the action.
One of the beneficiaries may be Florida, where the time zone is closer to those in Brazil.
But short-haul destinations in Europe will also be gearing up to open bars and clubs well into the night to make sure fans don’t miss out.
Whether 2014 will be a year of celebration for England’s football team is highly debatable, but let’s hope it proves to be just that for the travel industry.