Holiday cancellation levels are starting to drop overall despite a week-on-week jump of 40% across The Co-operative Travel Consortium bookings.
Speaking at the consortium’s first in-person conference since 2018, held at the Grand Palladium Sicilian Resort & Spa in Italy, head of retailing Alison Holmes said agency members had experienced a year of “peaks and troughs”.
“You have all experienced huge volumes of cancellations and amendments every single month when you have to collect deposits,” she said.
The holiday cancellation rate continued to “jump” up and down on a weekly basis, with last week’s level up by 40% on the prior week, she said, referring to holidays cancelled by both customers and by tour operators or airlines.
“Cancellations are still a challenge,” she added, but said: “It fluctuates but generally the volume of cancellations is coming down. It is nothing like we were getting two months ago.”
Holmes said consumer optimism levels among customers had been hit this year by the war in Ukraine and the rise in energy prices.
According to insights agency Kokoro’s weekly survey of 2,000 consumers between August and September this year, optimism levels fell in early September to the same level as at the height of the pandemic in 2020, she said.
The research also showed an 18% rise in consumers who felt “terrified” about their personal finances over the next 12 months and how they would be able to afford to put the heating on.
“This is way people are feeling around the UK. It does not come as a surprise. There are a lot of worried people out there,” said Holmes.
But she stressed it was “not all doom and gloom” with many consortium agents enjoying an increase in bookings in the last 12 months, embracing social media and opening new shops.
“Customers now appreciate the value of the agent,” she added.