EasyJet holidays will carry two million passengers this year, up from one million last year in its first full year of operation – but is only scratching the surface, according to its chief executive.
Speaking at a dinner for travel editors in London this week, Garry Wilson said he had big ambitions to grow and planned significant investment.
“We’ve been blown away by how popular it’s been. We carried one million customers, including accommodation-only last year, and two million (including accommodation-only) will use us to deliver them a really good holiday this year. We are the fast-growing travel brand in Europe and 68% of our customers say they intend to repeat with us,” he said.
Wilson continued: “We are offering brilliant holidays at unbeatable prices – but that doesn’t mean we are selling cheap breaks. Over 75% of what we’re selling is four and five-star hotels. People tend to know where they want to go and we deliver them the best hotels at the best times and prices. They find they can’t do it cheaper with others and they are voting with their feet. That’s why we’re seeing such huge growth.”
He said durations were also returning to pre-pandemic trends.
“We are regaining normality. What we found coming out of the pandemic, was that people, if they were going to travel, would do so for longer, so average durations were up to nine or 10 days. But now more people are taking shorter duration trips. It’s back to five or six days. There’s been a big shift. If you look at the growth we have, it’s the same passengers travelling much more,” said Wilson.
He said the company was going to invest more now, pointing out that there was “so much opportunity to grow”.
“The two million we’ll do this year is still less than 5% of the seats that EasyJet flies,” he said.
Wilson said the company was making a big investment into its cities programme, which he said had surprised them all by holding up so well.
“We have been pleasantly surprised that city breaks are still really popular. We keep waiting for the cost of living crisis to bite, which you’d think would affect those second and third trips like city breaks but we haven’t seen that.
“People are prioritising travel – it’s not falling to the wayside. Take Iceland – it’s not cheap to spend a weekend there but it’s enormously popular. So we’re going to invest more there, more into beach, and more into other products. We’re looking at ski, for example,” he said.
Wilson added that the operator had just launched in Switzerland as a second source market and had “others in the pipeline”.
“The focus for us is for every customer to have a fantastic time and book again,” he said. “The team is highly motivated; we’ve just won the Sunday Times’ best place to work in travel and it’s time to grow.”