Several tour operators launched Black Friday offers early to boost sales and engage with agents, a conference heard this week.
Speaking at the Abta Travel Trends conference, Ant Stone, G Adventures EMEA marketing director (pictured), said: “When I joined G seven and a half years ago, peaks was definitely a January event that had a long tail throughout the calendar year, but Black Friday or Cyber Sales has changed the game for that.”
He said that while it used to be more of “a direct play” to customers, and “quite hard to push” for agents, over the past few years he has noticed a trend of the trade instigating conversations with suppliers and “climbing onto Black Friday”.
Stone revealed G Adventures’ investment into the trade for Black Friday was now “on par” with peaks in January, when it used to be a 20/80 ratio when he started.
Both G Adventures and TTC Tour Brands revealed they had launched their Black Friday campaigns earlier this year to begin at the start of November and run through to early December to capitalise on demand.
Kelly Jackson, TTC Tour Brands EMEA managing director, said: “Black Friday gets longer and longer as we launched it nine days earlier this year, and in the first 10 days of our Black Friday deals, we exceeded our total sales for last year, which shows the huge demand.”
Looking to peaks, Jackson said the tour operator is “doubling down” and has all the plans for advertising and incentives ready to go for agents for launch on Boxing Day.
Sarah Fowler, Riviera Travel marketing director, said while the river cruise line and tour operator did not currently do “bespoke offers” for Black Friday, it packaged offers ending in November together under the same marketing.
She highlighted the continuing importance of peaks in January and February, adding: “Peaks is very much still a thing. This last year we saw a longer, flatter peak than we saw in 2023 where we had a very, very big January, but it dropped off more quickly in February.
“I’m not a betting woman, but I would anticipate a similar pattern to last year, rather than that very peaky peak that we saw with the post-Covid bounce back.”