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Thomas Cook announces surge in bookings
Mainstream bookings at Thomas Cook have picked up 19% in the past four weeks, the group said today, but it admitted the year will remain challenging.
Overall, Thomas Cook’s summer bookings are down 2% over last year and mainstream bookings are down 10%, but it has 17% fewer holidays left to sell compared with summer 2011.
Independent and specialist bookings are up 14% year on year, and the average selling price overall is up 4%.
Group chief executive Sam Weihagen said: "Trading across the group has been stable since we last reported and in line with expectations.
"In the last few weeks we have seen an improvement in UK booking trends, helped by our recently launched advertising campaign and upgrades to our thomascook.com website."
Winter bookings have also improved, said Cook, but it said the season overall remained subdued. The UK programme is currently 91% booked, which is in line with last year. Mainstream bookings have improved since Cook last reported and are now down 9% down, which is broadly in line with planned capacity cuts, it said.
"As we stated in our first quarter results, we continue to expect 2011/12 to be a challenging year given the economic backdrop and difficult trading environment, particularly for winter," the company added in a statement.
"The trends which we saw in the first quarter have continued through the second quarter, but summer trading is more encouraging."
By Linsey McNeill
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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