NEWS


Dame Irene at the Hays Travel Conference in Greece


Steve Byrne at the Travel Counsellors Conference in Liverpool


Agency bosses eye post-Budget bounce in consumer confidence


Robin Murray and Andrew McQuarrie


The chief executive of Travel Counsellors said he expects an upturn in confidence and sales once the Autumn Budget has been delivered as Hays Travel bosses set their sights on a third consecutive record peaks. The UK’s largest retail


and homeworking agencies presented the optimistic outlooks at their annual conferences, despite market challenges in the second half of 2025. Travel Counsellors chief executive


Steve Byrne said uncertainty around the Budget on November 26 had “affected consumer confidence” but insisted: “Once it is out of the way, we’ll see travel demand being sustained and growing.” Speaking to Travel Weekly at


the company’s annual conference in Liverpool, Byrne added: “It’s inevitable people will be a little


travelweekly.co.uk STORY TOP


cautious until they know more about the extent of the tax measures due to be announced. I’m sure the growth that we saw in the first half of the year will return once those customers who have lost a bit of confidence know what they are dealing with.” Byrne referenced Travel Counsellors’ travel tracker survey and other external studies which “all say consumers are still prioritising travel in their discretionary spend”. He said: “I don’t think this slowness is a permanent,


structural thing.” Addressing delegates at Hays


Travel’s annual conference in Greece, head of retail Paula Barrett said sales so far in November had been “promising” and insisted the agency could achieve a third record-breaking January in a row. “Can we make it a hat-trick? Yes,


we can,” she said, encouraging agents to continue following the agency’s strategy of targeting a balanced three-


way split of sales across long-haul, short-haul and cruise holidays. In the lead-up to the year’s end,


she stressed agents would need to “stay really focused” to continue the momentum built up this month. “Our challenge is to get as much


in the bag as possible [before the end of the year] so we go into 2026 with a nice cushion,” she said. Byrne highlighted “some


stabilisation” of holiday pricing in the market, which he forecast would provide a further boost to consumer confidence. “Since Covid holiday pricing


has increased, but it has softened in recent months,” he said. “We’ll probably still get some single-digit pricing growth into next year, but not at the levels of previous years.” Byrne said US bookings “have


softened because of the politics” but he expressed confidence that sales to the destination would pick up in 2026, pointing to major events the country is hosting, including the Fifa World Cup.


“There’s lots going on in the


States next year so we’re expecting stronger demand,” he added. “It’s still a really important destination but hasn’t had the growth other destinations have seen.” Hays Travel chair Dame Irene


Hays cited pieces of research by Barclays and Abta respectively to demonstrate the strength of demand for travel and the growing number of people booking through the trade. The bank’s latest consumer card


spending report, which combines hundreds of millions of customer transactions with consumer research, revealed spending with travel agents outpaced most other sectors last month as consumers adjusted their finances in the lead-up to the Budget. Spend with travel agents was


up by 7.2% over the same month last year, with transaction growth of 28.5%. Overall travel sector card spend was up by 2%, with transaction


levels down by 5.7%. i Conference report, pages 10-11


13 NOVEMBER 2025 5


PICTURES: Alice Lelliott; Simon Wright Photography


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72