The majority of Aito tour operators and travel agents expect business conditions to stay the same or improve over the next six months.
The Specialist Travel Association’s latest quarterly business tracker survey, which monitors members’ confidence, reflected an optimistic forecast in light of continued strong demand and booking levels during 2022.
The survey analysed 135 responses from 94 operator members of Aito and 41 of agent members during the third quarter of this year.
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In total, 82% expected business conditions to stay the same or improve over the next six months; 35% predicted an improvement; 47% thought business conditions would remain stable and 18% forecast they would get worse.
Releasing the results at the Aito Overseas Conference 2022, Roy Barker, co-founder of Spike Insight, which analysed the data, said: “This is despite inflation and cost of the living and the gloomy economic forecasts.”
The survey also showed 96% saw their business’ turnover increase compared to quarter three 2021, while 79% expected turnover to increase in quarter four compared to quarter three and 68% anticipated turnover would continue to increase over the next 12 months.
Commenting on the results, Westway Travel managing director Ian Prior said: “Profitability for this year has been exceptional. We are taking margins that are on average 1% above what we were taking pre Covid and conversations about discounting have gone away because of the poor experience people had in Covid. People are paying for better advice and quality of service.”
In terms of destinations, the survey showed members said they thought there would be a 15% net decrease in bookings of staycations in the next 12 months, a 44% net increase in short-haul sales and a 40% rise in long-haul sales.