Festive travellers bring industry cheer

Thursday, 19 Dec, 2002 0

There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for the travel industry, with some airlines and agents reporting positive bookings for the Christmas period.

Online retailer, OTC reported a 184 percent increase in bookings on its onlinetravel.com website during November. Popular destinations were New York, the Caribbean and South Africa. OTC has also reported a buoyant ski market, with bookings up 200 percent during the first week of December on ifyouski.com. Resorts such as Zermatt, Val d’Isere, Courchevel and Meribel were topping the list as usual.

OTC chief executive, Mark Jones told TravelMole: “Last year the ski market was depressed, plus early snow was poor, which discouraged bookings. This year the early snow falls in Europe have given bookings a boost”.

He said: “Our figures reflect a boom in the online travel marketplace generally, and demonstrate that consumers are now completely comfortable with booking holidays on the web”.

It is not just the ski market that is up, according to figures from British Airways, more UK travellers are opting for Christmas in the sunshine this year.

BA says it will fly 300,000 passengers out of Heathrow and Gatwick in the week leading up to Christmas, with most people travelling on 20 and 21 December.

It’s most popular worldwide destinations longhaul are similar to those topping the onlinetravel.com results, with New York as favourite, followed by Miami, Los Angeles and Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, BA’s most popular shorthaul destinations for the festive period have been somewhat of a surprise, with Athens, Larnaca and Lisbon all in the top five, pushing out the usual favourite, Paris. A spokesperson told TravelMole: “We have been offering some cheaper fares to Europe which could be why people are heading to more exotic destinations. Afterall, Larnaca is a lot warmer than Paris at Christmas.

“It is a case of the British flying South for the winter”.

The most popular shorthaul destination with BA customers was Rome, which made it to number seven last year.