Travel column with Katie Butler of Total Travel: Another week, another heatwave – but are we still booking holidays?
Another week, another heatwave! By the time you read this, we may well be back to the mid-20s, which I suspect will come as something of a relief to quite a few people, I know it will me.
I must admit, I am always slightly annoyed when I head off on my overseas holiday only to discover it is red hot back home.
This year, though, I think I’d be more than happy to swap the garden for a pool, a sea breeze and a cocktail at sunset.
Of course, knowing my luck, when I head away in September the temperatures here will have dropped and I won’t be able to gloat!
It has been a very busy June and July for us at Total Travel, with August following in much the same fashion, so I was interested to read some of the latest figures from Barclays which suggest that holiday spending across the UK may be starting to soften.
According to the latest Barclays UK Consumer Spend Report, spending on travel fell for the fifth consecutive month in July.
Overall spending on travel was down 0.3 per cent compared with July last year, while spending with airlines fell by six per cent, despite the number of airline transactions dropping by only 1.8 per cent.
But there was one particularly interesting figure for us travel agents: spending through travel agents actually increased by 2.5 per cent, while the number of bookings rose by 5.7 per cent.
That certainly reflects what we have been seeing locally and we are welcoming plenty of brand-new customers through our doors which is always encouraging.
Despite all the talk about the cost of living and people being more cautious with their money, holidays clearly remain something that many people are still determined to budget for.
Perhaps we’ve decided that, when it comes to holidays, we’d rather have a proper break than spend the money on a load of other things we probably don’t need!
Consumer confidence also improved, reaching its highest level for 21 months. So perhaps things are looking a little brighter than they have done for some time.
Looking at our own bookings last week, September was the most popular departure period, accounting for 17 per cent of bookings. August was a close second with 14 per cent, followed by October with 12 per cent.
Interestingly, 46 per cent of our bookings were made as late bookings, showing that plenty of people are still happy to leave things until fairly close to departure before deciding where they fancy going.
As for destinations, the top three based on passenger numbers were Majorca in first place, cruises departing from Southampton in second, and Tenerife in third.
It is this time of year when we start to see our customers returning from their summer holidays and they are keen to get next year booked, so I do expect the pattern to shift a little over the coming weeks.
It is definitely a good time to book for next year, free child places are available and the pick of the good flight times, and don’t forget if you managed to get a rain cheque or discount voucher from the holiday you have returned from, you can usually use these at your local independent travel agent too.