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British travellers are racing to book last-minute summer holidays in a bid to escape wet weather at home and cut costs by opting for all-inclusive packages and cheaper deals.
Loveholidays, the UK’s largest online travel agent, said 64 per cent of current bookings had been made for trips starting in the next 90 days, up from 59 per cent last year.
Chief executive Donat Rétif said Britain’s “miserable” weather was a main factor behind the rise in late reservations, with 4.9mn people due to go abroad with the company in 2024, up from 3mn in 2023.
“I think people just need to see some sun,” he said, noting that while Spain, Greece and Turkey remained top destinations, Albania, Romania and Tunisia were increasingly popular with customers who could “stay for longer without compromising on hotel quality”.
In a sign of customers wanting “more control over their holiday spending”, all-inclusive deals had been the most popular product this summer, he added, accounting for 42 per cent of bookings compared with 36 per cent in 2019.
MSC Cruises, the biggest European operator whose packages include meals and shows, said last week that bookings made in July for trips in August and September had surged by 30 per cent from last year.
Antonio Paradiso, UK and Ireland managing director, said “weeks of dismal weather and the conclusion of the UK election and Euros” meant it was “not surprising that Britons are only now deciding it’s time for a holiday”.
Rétif also said that in the three days after England lost to Spain in the final of the European Championship football tournament on July 14, UK bookings were up 10 per cent from the same period the week before.
The surge in last-minute bookings comes as Britain experiences a cooler than average summer. The Met Office has said temperatures were “persistently below average across the UK” in the first part of July.
By that point, parts of the south-west, south-east and north-east of England had had more rainfall than their average for the entire month, the national weather service added in a blog post.
One in five UK adults would book a holiday “purely to escape from poor weather”, according to a survey published this week by Abta, the travel association.
Even as price pressures ease, with inflation holding at a near three-year low of 2 per cent in June, households hit by the rise in living costs “are opting to secure value-for-money deals”, said Céline Fenech, consumer insight lead at Deloitte.
Research conducted in June by the advisory firm showed consumer sentiment in “holidays, hotel stays and leisure travel” recorded the biggest quarterly increase of all measured leisure activities, which included “attending live sports events” and “eating out”.
But it was the only category with a notable decline in spending intention in the next three months, pointing to weaker demand for holidays in off-peak periods, said Fenech.
On the Beach, an online travel agent, said it was seeing a polarisation in booking patterns, with customers either coming forward at late notice to “seek value for money for last-minute trips” or making summer reservations earlier than ever — with January becoming the busiest time for booking summer holidays.
Almost 10,000 flights to Morocco, Turkey and Greece are scheduled to leave UK airports this July, an increase of 52 per cent from July 2019, according to Cirium.
The 13,000 flights due to take off for the Netherlands, France and Italy this month represented only 87 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, said the aviation data provider.
The European Travel Commission, which promotes tourism around the continent, said Britons remained “strongly focused on lower-cost destinations” compared with European peers.
It noted that, up to June, Turkey and Serbia had some of the biggest growth in UK arrivals compared with 2019 levels.
