Fears of massive discounting recede as package prices 'hold'

Looking at the bigger picture, data from Barclays shows consumer card transactions in travel agencies were up by 11.7% in August, with spend up 7.2% year-on-year. Given that 2023 was a record year, it is an indication that prices remain heightened.

Kelly Cookes, the Advantage Travel Partnership’s chief commercial officer, agreed the robust-demand, high-price scenario appears to have played out.

“The strong sales we’re seeing, along with the average selling price performance, demonstrates that prices are holding and are ahead of last year,” she said.

“Demand over the past few weeks has continued to be strong with mass-market sales up by 20% on last year, long-haul up by 15% and cruise up by 33%."
 
However, she added consumers “are still very much seeking value for money”. “We can see this in the fact that all-inclusive remains incredibly popular.”

‘General appetite for travel’

In Scotland, Scott Murray of Murray Travel in Inverness, also said the weather had “played a part”, but added: “I wouldn’t say we’ve had a massive lates.

"We definitely had a lull when the Euros and Olympics were on, then July was our third-biggest month ever, but there is an awful lot for next year as well.

"I think pricing of lates is still quite high; maybe people waited to see if prices would drop and they didn’t. People that have the budgets are spending, but families are not stretching to the current pricing levels for Europe.”

In Northern Ireland, Oasis Travel managing director Sandra Corkin saw a different booking pattern. “We’ve been really busy in July and August after June was very average for us," she said. "We saw a lot of last-minute bookings in July, and then in August, they were mainly for winter and next summer.

"I honestly put it down to the weather being so bad and people desperately looking for something good to look forward to. There seems to be a general appetite out there for travel because they want something happy and uplifting."

Corkin said there had been an absence of “silly” prices in the lates market, adding “they weren’t cheap, but they weren’t inflated”.
 
“Previously, we’ve seen prices have been inflated for late bookers in the summer, but this year we were still able to get people holidays at realistic prices,” she said.

However, Corkin said high flight prices had been apparent, and that because of this, “people could see the advantages of coming to travel agents to buy a package”.
 
“We do feel encouraged by what we’ve seen in the last two months,” she added.