Travel with Katie Butler: Holidays remain high priority for many

The Greek island of Leros is one of the new destinations added to the Jet2holidays programme for this year. Photo: StockAdobe

It is hard to comprehend that only last week many of our kids enjoyed nearly an extra week off school, our bins remained full from Christmas and of course our UK airports were struggling to cope with the minus temperatures and heavy snowfall.

Katie Butler, Total Travel, writes: Thankfully, as I write this, we have some milder weather and I am sure I am not the only travel agent to be relieved, along with everyone else.

Holidays are go! And according to the Barclays turn-of-year Consumer Spent Report the travel industry is continuing to outperform the vast majority of other sectors in terms of spending, demonstrating that a holiday and experiences remain a high priority for many.

Spending with travel agents increased by 7.9 per cent year on year, although down from 10.4 per cent the previous year (post Covid boom). However, growth in total travel transactions with actual travel agents went up by a whopping 14 per cent in 2024, proving significantly that more and more of you are trusting the role of your travel agent to look after your third most important purchase.

Barclays accompanying consumer confidence survey, which asked 2,000 UK consumers to rank their discretionary spending priorities, also saw holidays come out on top chosen by more than a fifth of respondents.

"Three in ten consumers have already booked a getaway for 2025, with almost a quarter of these holidaymakers booking early to save money, and one in three choosing to visit a new destination they’ve not been to before," said Barclays.

It has certainly been a fabulous start to January for Total Travel and tour operators such as Jet2holidays, TUI and Easyjet are recording bumper sales and expecting a huge 2025. This backed up with new destinations and increases in capacity to new and existing destinations.

In fact, Jet2.com and Jet2holidays have launched their biggest ever programme to Greece for 2025, with a whopping three million seats on sale alongside three new destinations and eight flight routes. The Greek islands of Poros, Aegina and Leros have been added to the programme for this year and I am delighted to see some of the smaller islands easily available again as part of a package holiday.

Easyjet have five new routes from Manchester for 2025, namely Izmir, Kalamata, Larnaca, Madrid and Rome and are also serving Leeds Bradford Airport with routes to Malaga and Palma.

All of this is great, having more destinations and especially new destinations is fantastic for the industry and gives customers more choice and variety, and hopefully will help with pricing as airlines and tour operators try to remain competitive.

January is always a mixed bag on what is selling, it is the busiest month of the year for new bookings and so the week in – week out destinations can quite often change.

Thailand has shown our biggest growth at Total Travel, it is a bucket-list destination for many and offers exceptional value for money. Large group holidays have also seen a huge increase, be it groups of young families travelling together or multi-generation holidays.