Gold Medal: 'It feels like we've got momentum going into peaks'

Gold Medal’s Pure Luxury brand generated the greatest total booking value on the day, including six-figure Mauritius and Barbados trips.

The former came from Steve Wright at Worldchoice Travel Shrewsbury, who worked with Pure Luxury to convert the enquiry for One & Only Le Saint Geran within a week, and the latter from London-based Just Fly Business for a stay at the famous Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados.

Wright told TTG that while the customer was one of the agency’s regulars, they hadn’t previously spent so much, with the booking for a major anniversary starting out as a business class flight enquiry for two.

"When the time came to cough up, he decided to push the boat out and fly all 11 people business class," said Wright, for whom the package is the biggest Wright has handled in his 32-year career. "I’ve done £80,000-£90,000 ones and organised a trip for 60-odd people, but this tops that."

The day was rounded off with a five-figure Cruise Plus booking by Abigail Wisdom from Hampshire’s Meon Valley Travel – a 16-stateroom Qatar World Cup booking for MSC Cruises, which has positioned ships in Doha to bolster accommodation options for the tournament.

The booking came about when Meon Valley marketing executives Daisy Fawcett and Carrie Palmer got talking to MSC regional sales manager Neil Hussey at the Advantage Travel Partnership cruise conference, which was held onboard Virgin Voyages’ Valiant Lady as it sailed from Ibiza to Barcelona in early October.

"We knew [World Cup] accommodation was high in demand, but Fifa had held 80% of the rooms," Fawcett told TTG. "It was perfect timing, if we hadn’t gone on the cruise we wouldn’t have been able to make the booking."

Birmingham said the booking, which had been in the pipeline for weeks, was finally put through at 11.54pm on the Thursday, with teams at both Cruise Plus and Meon Valley going "above and beyond" to get the sale.

"We’ll often find our team are connecting with agents out of hours because they want to get that booking through," said Birmingham. "We’re really privileged to have such fantastic people who really support our agents."

Over the past 12 weeks, Birmingham said the group had taken several high value bookings – surpassing £50,000 – to destinations ranging from South Africa and Canada to Australia and the Maldives, with bookings for Asian destinations such as Thailand and Japan finally on the up again.

She said the sales should serve as a reminder to agents that there would be a "real glimmer of opportunity" for agents to convert high value enquiries in the new year during peaks, despite the global economic downturn and cost of living crisis.

"We can’t get away from the fact it will be challenging," Birmingham continued, highlighting how the many headwinds the trade has faced in recent months such as the political turmoil in Westminster, the pound’s weakness against the US dollar following Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-Budget and the death of the Queen had also impacted suppliers like Gold Medal.

"What we saw from a trading point of view was a dip in demand in line with what the agents saw in September and October," said Birmingham. "But we’ve pulled through [November] quite strongly. It feels like we’ve got momentum through to Christmas, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that momentum continues through to that peaks period.

"We’re really optimistic - we always anticipate what the peak season will bring us, but fingers crossed it’s going to be more of the same good results."