Jet2 trade chiefs: 'We know package holidays are here to stay'

One trend Alan and his team have observed over the past year is agency owners getting more involved in day-to-day operations. “They’re becoming more aware they have to be on top of their businesses,” he says.

“Decision-making has been elevated back up to senior levels – we need to put more emphasis on training senior managers and directors.

“We’re also seeing expansion, people going up from one shop to two, three, five – they’re using the strength of the Jet2holidays brand to hit the ground running in new regions.”

Embracing the brand

Branding is a priority for Lloyd. “It’s the big thing that makes a difference,” he says. “Branded shops perform better.”

Around 130 agencies have taken Jet2 up on the digital window displays it launched last year, while more than 200 have new Jet2 hanging shop signs.

Shops with digital displays, Lloyd says, have performed 5% better year-on-year, on average. Jet2 is also putting funds behind efforts allowing non-retail businesses to establish a high street presence during peaks.

Jet2 has a trade team of 20 spanning field sales, operations, marketing, events and analysis. “Do we need 30?” says Alan. “No. But we need to keep looking at where the emphasis is. I’d say in the next six months, there could be another one or two.”

Changes have been made to better cater for non-retail – homeworker and call centre – business, which now accounts for 20% of all trade. “There will definitely be more emphasis on non-retail [in 2025],” Alan adds.

Working ’smarter’

New bases in Bournemouth (next month) and Luton (April) won’t necessitate major changes, pairing with Bristol and Stansted respectively to form regional clusters. “For every new base, we analyse the sales we think agents will deliver,” says Alan. “We look at overspread of catchments, like Liverpool [launched in 2024] and Manchester. We knew there would be dilution, but we’ve captured a region that way.”

Lloyd, who is working on a project to identify all individual agents selling Jet2, adds: “We need to be a bit smarter [as a team] rather than bigger in numbers. We’re using technology to do this. Plus, homeworkers – for instance – aren’t necessarily selling their nearest bases.”

Package sales now account for more than 70% of Jet2’s business, and are helping grow the addressable market for agents. “A lot of our marketing is about getting flight-only customers to think about the support they get when they book a package,” says Alan. “That strategy is working well.”

Jet2 debuted a new AI “conversational search” tool at its conference in November, and is working towards making its trade website fully self-service. “We’re still there for more complex queries, but we’re looking at how to streamline this,” says Lloyd.

Alan says relaunching live chat has been a hit with agents. “About 17% of bookings that come into the contact centre are from agents,” he explains. “A lot of the time, it’s driven by them having a question they can’t answer themselves. Often, they know 90% of the answer, they just want confirmation. So the more we can do to hand it to them, the better.”

With long-haul (unlikely) and ski packages (feasible) already on agents’ 2025 Christmas lists, what else are they after? Alan identifies demand for smaller Greek islands – something Jet2 is addressing with the launch of Poros, Aegina and Leros – and shorter transfers. “Two-and-a-half hours is unacceptable,” he remarks. “Agents don’t like pushing that to customers. We’re constantly adding new routes to reduce transfer times.”

Value message critical

Value will be key in 2025, he believes. “One of the biggest obstacles to sales in the past year has been customer budget. They don’t want cheap, it’s about value – and value can be a £300pp holiday or a £5,000pp holiday.

“Agents also need to know what their clients are getting at a service level. Agents want to sell holidays – they don’t want to spend 20% of their time dealing with problems after the holiday. The only follow-up they want [with clients] is them booking again.”

Jet2 is continuing to increase the number of enhanced “destination discovery” fams it offers each year. “We did 18 this year,” says Lloyd. "We have about 10-12 agents on them. We could take more, but we keep them small so we can host the agents properly and allow everyone to get to know each other. The goal is to get a minimum of 200 agents out on destination experiences each year.”

Alan adds that when agents experience these destinations they learn about what they have to offer – and how to market them. Jet2 will also look to host more meetings of agencies’ senior leadership teams overseas this year, he reveals.

Know your rivals

So where are agents missing out? What about the competition? And what should be front-of- mind in 2025? “Not enough agents are multi-marketing and multi-selling,” says Alan. “Their attitude is always to sell further out. Cruise and long-haul – you can market 2026 and 2027 already.

“But 30% of what’s selling today is for travel 10-12 weeks out. They need to go after people wanting to travel in the next three months separately to those looking to book for future seasons.”

Jet2 may be the UK’s single largest package operator, with more than seven million Atol authorisations. But the UK’s five largest OTAs – Loveholidays, On the Beach, Booking.com, Lastminute.com and Expedia – are licensed to carry 8.5 million passengers this year. They’re rivals agents can’t afford to ignore.

“Agents have to remember the OTA market is a package market,” says Alan. “So there’s definitely enough business out there for agents to go after – package holidays are here to stay.”