What does 2025 have in store for agents? The view from the shop floor to the boardroom

Dame Irene Hays highlights the increase in regional flying the big three have brought to the short-haul market. “That’s good for agents,” she observes. However, Hays believes consumers’ desire to travel long-haul is rising, a theme of the 2024 Hays Travel conference.

She also cites recent TTG Agenda 2024 research showing nearly seven in 10 operators have experienced greater demand for higher-end travel – putting it on par with mid-haul. “So there’s not just more short-haul capacity – the appetite for long-haul and cruise is exactly the same,” she says.

Dame Irene Hays: ’We have to keep finding new ways to make more money’

Moreover, the abundance of new ships coming to market is making cruise “better value than it’s ever been”. Geopolitical challenges also bring agents’ value to the fore, Hays adds, particularly where airline schedules change and cruises are rerouted.

“The value placed on someone you trust to resolve things is, in my opinion, greater than ever,” she says. “I don’t think we have ever had the range of complex events we have today.”

Consumer priorities

Advantage members’ 2025 sales are 15% ahead of the same point 12 months ago, while Hays points to successful campaigns for 2025 and 2026 land-based holidays, and 2027 cruises.

Lo Bue-Said, in particular, says she is “very optimistic”. “In 2024, consumers made travel a spending priority. I don’t see any reason why that shouldn’t be the same [this year]. However, there are some headwinds heading our way.”

She believes new governments in the US and France, plus the situation in Syria, “can impact how people see the world”. She also points towards inflation in the UK, which crept up again in October and November, acknowledging households would “feel the pinch”. However, Lo Bue-Said insists the overriding sentiment is positive.

Another plus is a younger generation living at home with their parents for longer. “They have more money to spend on travel,” she says, adding older people are benefiting from better savings rates and “want to
do nice things”.

Advantage members, Lo Bue-Said reveals, have seen a 30% increase in new customers. “That’s phenomenal; people want trust and financial protection.”

The positives keep coming. Hays believes agencies’ staffing problems stemming from the pandemic exodus appear to be easing.

“Coming into peaks – even last year – we were still feeling the brunt of the ‘great resignation’,” she recalls. “We do not have those gaps this January. I think a lot of people had the same issues we did. That’s another cause for optimism.”

At grassroots level, the sentiment is the same. “One of the difficulties coming out of Covid was getting the right staff in place,” says Ann Anglesea from Wrexham’s Delmar World.

“Last year, more people returned to travel, so that experienced workforce is now back in place.” She adds: “2024 was our best year ever, so we’re very optimistic about 2025.”

’Missing family market’

One potential drawback is that 2025 will finally see the EU’s new biometric border controls introduced.

In Norwich, Oyster Travel’s co-owner Vicky Samwell-Buckenham reveals customers have asked about the plans for fingerprinting and facial recognition. However, she is unfazed.

“Once they get used to it, it will become normal," she insists. "It’s like with Covid, we adapted to fill in different forms and just got on with it.”

Samwell-Buckenham predicts “a strong year” for the agency. “There’s a lot more confidence among customers. We’re finding people are booking more than one trip a year as they want different adventures and bucket-list trips.”

However, in Hampshire, Meon Valley Travel’s James Beagrie is more cautious about the general picture. “We’re not expecting 2025 to be our best year,” he predicts. “The market has changed. I’m not expecting families to book in the numbers they have in the past, and that’s to do with cost and finding value for money.”

Beagrie has better hopes for cruise and couples. “We’re expecting our booking numbers to be lower, but higher value. We’ve had some fairly big numbers in the past – 2019 was particularly strong for us – and I’d expect to be close to that. But I’d be surprised if that’s surpassed purely because of that missing family market.”

Cruising into choppy waters?

As for world events affecting sales, cruise arguably has the most to lose, with the threat of disruption to itineraries. Cruise365’s Anthony Blackmore has geopolitical concerns. “There’s the US, the Ukraine-Russia war, Israel, the Red Sea. There are parts of the world we hope will reopen, but fortunately, there are [still] places to go.”

He adds: “There’s a lot to sell for 2025. Capacity has got back to where we needed it to be.” He predicts “a good year for good agencies”, but stresses: “People who are part-time travel agents or trying to sell holidays as a side hustle will find it hard. People are looking for proper expertise.”