Jet2holidays to roll out virtual holiday show initiative

"Our principle before was take the agent out of the high street and [bring them] into the community," said Cross. "That’s a bit harder to do now with actual social distancing."

Cross, though, said the virtual holiday shows were an "obvious transition", given the circumstances of the Covid crisis, and would help bring agents closer to their clients.

"We’ve embraced the virtual Partners 2 Success and as part of that, we are going to do virtual holiday shows so travel agents can contact their customers and do a joint show with Jet2holidays," said Cross.

"They last in the region of 25-30 minutes and cover all the products we do. We introduce the agent, go through a selection of holidays, and there are offers at the end so they’ve got a promotion they can offer their customers to follow up on.

"We’ve done three so far to trial and experiment it, but we will be cranking that up through December, January and February, and into the future."

Cross said beyond Jet2holidays’ core beach offering, sessions would cover product from Indulgent Escapes, Vibe by Jet2holidays, Jet2CityBreaks and Jet2Villas.

He added its was Jet2holidays’ belief, at least in terms of late-2020 and early-2021, that the traditional new year peaks sales window was already well under way.

"In my mind, peaks starts now," he said. "Let’s not kid ourselves, you’ve got to work for every booking you can get now.

"When we talk about peaks, what we are going to do is soften the peaks out. By selling now, it’ll be a more gradual incline to get customers involved."