Newmarket Holidays has forecast a recovery to almost pre-pandemic levels in 2022.
The escorted tours specialist’s UK and Lapland programmes handled 8,000 customers last year, described as a “milestone” in recovery.
The company’s domestic programme has been running for more than 30 years and this was the biggest factor in enabling holidays for customers in 2021, accounting for more than 60% of passengers.
Lapland day trips in December operated normally and accounted for more than 25% of passengers in 2021.
Head of trade sales Richard Forde said: “Clearly we expect 2022 to be much stronger and we predict the UK programme to remain popular but account for a much smaller percentage of our business.
“The past couple of weeks have been full of positive news for the travel industry so we expect this year to be much closer to what we were seeing in 2019.”
He added: “The UK programme has always been popular with customers and having run these for many years put us in a fortunate position of being able to operate these normally during 2021.
“New tours to the programme like ‘Liverpool – Beatles & Merseybeat’ and ‘Dorset – The Jurassic Coast’ also helped make the programme a success and remain for 2022. We are also well known for our Lapland day trips which operated normally in December along with long-haul tours like Canada and USA relaunching at the end of 2021.
“We were also able to operate many European destinations throughout the year, such as Jersey, Italy and Portugal.
“Reflecting on last year, we are really pleased to have delivered so many tours for customers in what was a tricky year operationally for the industry.”
The first post-pandemic central American tour departed this week with a group in Costa Rica. Africa and Indian Ocean departures follow later this month.
“It really is a cause for celebration as an industry and for our customers. They are just so delighted to reconnect with the world,” Forde added.