Agents 'cautiously optimistic' about 2022 bounceback

Gemma Antrobus, managing director of Haslemere Travel, said she was "very confident" about the summer. "I think we’ve started to get away from the feeling that high cases equal lockdown. That was the fear, that was the pattern we got into over the past 18-20 months.

"Now that we’ve had a period of time where the cases have been really high but haven’t gone into a lockdown, it’s kind of broken that cycle."

Antrobus said the number of enquiries she received last week was comparable with October when the UK’s travel and testing restrictions were at their most relaxed since the start of the pandemic.

"It’s been steadily increasing since the turn of the year, and since the restrictions were changed," she said. "I think there are a lot of people who have held on and now are just fed up – they want something to look forward to."

’Unless they go, it doesn’t mean a thing’

Advantage Travel Partnership leisure director Kelly Cookes said members were reporting clients’ feelings about international travel had changed since restrictions were eased. 

"I think I would describe it as more of a cautious optimism," she said. "We’re hopeful now this is the beginning of the end. But our members are also conscious that we’ve been here before, and what the long-term plan is? If there’s another variant, who’s to say borders won’t start closing again?

"A lot of members have got really good books of business for this year, but it’s still all about getting that business away. They’re definitely a lot more optimistic than they were, but we are still in a tough time."

Karen Marin Reyes, managing director of La Vida Travel in Newport, described the start of last week as "hell". "There is no other word for it," Reyes told TTG. 

"We came in and everyone wanted to move their holidays. It was really bad. We’ve been here for three or four years and never in our history have we come across something so bad."

However, on Saturday (8 January), Reyes said the agency saw a sharp uptick in bookings and enquiries. "It was the most we have sold in a day during Covid," she said. "But it’s a very hard one. We can get excited as we want, but unless they go, it doesn’t mean a thing.

"We’ve got about 100 enquiries to work on I would say, and they’re good enquiries as well. It’s really good, but they’ve just got to go."