What's hot and what’s not for weddings and honeymoons
Gillian Ashwood, director, We Travel To took the TTG Top 50 crown for Weddings and Honeymoons earlier this year. She tells TTG where’s trending with her clients when it comes to saying I do.
Has winning a TTG Top 50 award helped you?
Within days of winning the award for top weddings and honeymoon agency earlier this year, we were getting new enquiries. Being such a tiny shop, it’s certainly been beneficial to us. We have new video screens, so we’re promoting it on those.
Has capacity been a problem due to pandemic rebookings?
We’ve had some bookings moved two or three times. One couple moved seven times. We’re now booking up to
the end of 2024 and we’ve people patiently waiting for 2025. Most of our weddings are for Jamaica and Barbados, but there’s not a lot of availability. If we’ve got a big wedding party, we have to change them to another date or another resort or destination. For specific requests, unless it’s a higher-category room, we’ve often had to push them to next year.
Any other challenges?
The hardest thing has been the Caribbean. We have horrendous connectivity now, lots of the Glasgow-Gatwick and Heathrow flights have been cut, so some clients are having to fly from Glasgow to Gatwick then cut across London to Heathrow, or vice versa, and then maybe do the same on the way back. And the flight costs have gone through the roof. For a lot of the transfers, we’ve taken money out of our own pocket, but when you have, say, a family of 10 you can only do so much. Sometimes we’re sending them via America. We’re also going down the Dubai, Maldives or Dubai, Mauritius route more [with suggestions] because the connections are great.
Which destinations are in vogue?
For honeymoons we’re getting lots of enquiries for Florida with Mexico, for American multi-centres or even Florida then a Caribbean island. Of those, only multi-centre America was normal pre-pandemic. We’ve had quite a few Australia enquiries lately, so that’s starting to come back too.
Any other trends?
A lot of couples who don’t go straight away on honeymoon do a little city break then maybe even end up on honeymoon for their one-year anniversary so they can save, or use money given as wedding gifts. Prague is quite popular, Rome’s another along with Krakow. We also do quite a lot of “re-tie-the-knots”. Barbados is popular for that.
What big bookings are you working on?
We have a client doing Dubai and the Maldives, but they want to do different islands in the Maldives. They thought they could just fly from island to island [not via Male]. We’re still talking about private transfers, but I think
they’ll go for it. We also have clients taking their baby on honeymoon to Thailand. They’re going to meet with one set of parents halfway through. I’m now an expert in the baby food and milk you can take on a plane!
What’s your advice for people honeymooning or marrying overseas?
You get a couple on an appointment and maybe he says “New York”, she says “Sri Lanka”… So try to pick somewhere you both fancy and neither of you have been to before, if possible, so it’s new and fresh. For a wedding, I’d say about 60% [of invitees] say they’ll come, then about 10-15% drop off when the time to pay comes around. Our advice is to do a budget, say £1,200 per person, over 12 months, £100 each a month, so guests aren’t suddenly hit with a big bill before the wedding.
Where do you recommend for same-sex couples?
We are currently working with a same-sex couple on their honeymoon. Originally, they really fancied some places where they just wouldn’t have been comfortable, so they’re now going to San Francisco, then Hawaii and back via Vegas. Greece is a popular option, also New York, Thailand, Mauritius and Ibiza. For a legal marriage [not a blessing], America is always a popular one.
Any other exciting bookings you can share with us?
I currently have one daughter getting married who is going to Sandals in Saint Lucia and another daughter getting married, looking at Curacao. For one of them, it’s a surprise, and we’re even going to pack her suitcase with a few red herrings.
Recommended For You
Most read features
Competitions
Upcoming events
Place of registration: England and Wales.
Company number 08723341.
Registered address: 6th Floor, 2 London Wall Place, London EC2Y 5AU
