NEWS SPECIAL REPORT ‘Brexit fatigue is having biggest


Industry-wide round-table: In the week at the end of March that the UK had been due to leave the EU, a group of travel executives representing many sectors of the industry met to discuss the state of the market in a debate hosted by Hotelplan UK and Travel Weekly. Lucy Huxley reports


John Sullivan, head of commercial, Advantage:


“There’s some Brexit fatigue. The


mass market is the most-impacted. It’s running flat on last year. However, outside of that, cruising, long-haul and luxury are doing OK. Some members are saying it’s the best January and February ever. Others are having a harder time.”


Karen Wheeler, vice-president and country manager UK, Affinion International: “The higher end is still booking. We had a very flat March. But cruise and high- end bookings are doing OK and the average booking value is good.”


Nick Marks, joint managing director, Baldwins Travel: “January was seriously down. February was very


good – almost a spike, and March has been static. We are struggling with bookings to Europe because people are worried. They are asking if we can guarantee that their flight is going to take off and come back.”


just aren’t pulling the trigger.”


“We are struggling with bookings to Europe because people are worried”


Gary Anslow, sales director, Cunard: “This year is much tougher than 2020 for the cruise industry.


People are booking cruises, but 16- 18 months out. I believe they are still going to book 2019, it’s just that every week their proposed booking date is moving back.”


Dean Harvey, marketing director, Kuoni: “Kuoni is in that sweet spot. We sell luxury beach and a bit of cruise. Peaks is becoming less peaky, and forward bookings are going through the roof. Much of luxury beach is around weddings and honeymoons, which Brexit isn’t going to impact.”


Richard Sinclair, managing director, Sno: “There is huge pent-up demand but people


Joe Ponte, managing director, Explore: “We’ve seen our strongest start to the year for four years, but Europe sales are down by double digits, while the rest of the world is massively up. This means our average booking value is also up.”


Maria Whiteman, managing director, Saga Holidays:


“Customers are taking one long- haul trip instead of maybe three or four short-haul ones. So the overall effect is that spend is down.”


Phil Gardner, sales and e-commerce director, Thomas Cook: “If you look at Cook


online, our conversion rates for Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia are two-and-a-half times what it is for Spain and Portugal.”


Karen Wheeler: “We are seeing a lot of bookings to Egypt.”


Joe Ponte: “We are also seeing bookings back to the Middle East.”


14travelweekly.co.uk11 April 2019


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