Agencies have reported increasingly strong sales as January continues, yet some have noted hesitation in the family market due to pricing.
Barrhead Travel revealed Saturday, January 18, had been the strongest day in its history, beating the previous high set the preceding Saturday, while Travel Counsellors has recorded eight days in January that rank among its top-25 sales days in its 30-year history.
Nicki Tempest-Mitchell, Barrhead Travel managing director, said: “Last week really saw peaks take hold in our retail network.
“We’d already had a strong start to January, but it seems that consumer sentiment has changed gears and has accelerated very quickly.”
Hays Travel hailed a “buoyant” month so far, while InteleTravel described this year’s peaks performance as “staggering”.
Independent Travel Experts, The Travel Network Group’s homeworking division, has welcomed growing momentum as the month progresses.
“Following some initial variability in the first week, bookings steadily climbed from January 8 onward and culminated in a strong surge last week,” said managing director Gary Gillespie.
A similar pattern was identified by Premier Travel managing director Paul Waters. “We were very pleased with the performance last week, which showed a good improvement compared with the previous week and finished 17% higher than the same week last year,” he said.
Asked to explain the improvements, he suggested the cold snap earlier in the month was perceived to have dented footfall and added that pricing is an ongoing challenging factor.
“Pricing still seems to be high for the traditional summer package market, especially for people who asked for quotes before Christmas,” he said. “They were expecting to see prices come down, but they haven’t in most cases.”
Dawson & Sanderson reported that last week’s figures showed passenger numbers for summer departures were down 3% compared with last year, but revenue was 10% up.
Commercial and corporate director Judith Alderson said the slight drop in passenger figures “may in part be due to the increase in cost”, citing a £50 rise in the average selling price of mainstream European summer package holidays compared with January 2024.