| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 01/05/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 48 |
| Copyright: Other |
Fluctuating trends
Football alters demand for Avro Gatwick flights
AVRO is putting on extra flights for the end of this month after seeing higher than expected demand for seats during the half-term school holidays.The operator is offering additional flights from Gatwick to Faro in Portugal to cater for the increased demand, which it believes could have been caused by the European football championships taking place next month.
Avro distribution director John Fitz-Gerald explained: “People who would normally go away next month have probably decided to go this month instead so they can be at home to watch the football.”
He said bookings for next month were not as strong as those for this month but added that business for this period could pick up over the next few weeks. “Anyway, we have got less capacity to sell for next month than we had for June last year because we realised it might be difficult to sell and we cut back early on,” he said.
However, Fitz-Gerald said Avro had more capacity to sell for summer 2000 than it had this time last year but less than it had at the end of the summer 1999 season. Such figures indicate that, with a strong seat-only market, there is less likelihood that flight prices will be slashed during the summer.
“The only danger is that if the package-holiday market doesn’t pick up, the inclusive tour operators will try to sell their excess capacity as seat-only and that would destabilise the market,” said Fitz-Gerald.
“Rival seat-only operators claim bookings for the whole of the summer are surprisingly good so far, which indicates that the seat-only business is continuing to benefit from the downturn in package holiday bookings.”
First Choice Flights marketing planning manager Peter Tsitsaros said: “We are doing extremely well. Our sales for May and June are very strong, and I think seat-only is becoming a more attractive proposition to a lot of people.”
Tsitsaros said that although First Choice still had seats left to sell for May and June, there would be no massive discounts for clients who hang on to the last minute to book.
Airtours Flights said that while it had cut prices on some routes this month, it had no plans for heavy discounting.
Head of Airtours commercial long haul, Andrew Burgess said: “Our prices are where we would expect them to be and we are certainly not planning to dump seats. We are seeing very strong seat-only sales for the summer and this is a growing part of our business.”
JMC Airfares general manager Rob Thompson said load factors on the operator’s sister airline JMC were higher than expected for May and June. He said the operator was now concentrating on shifting peak season capacity.
Change of plan: football fans are going away this month to return in time for Euro 2000
Factfile
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