With the first month of the year done and dusted, January has once again proved to be a popular time for most of us to book our yearly holiday (or holidays!). And it’s no surprise that 2012 has truly started with a bang for Holidaysplease, with record sales reported in January.

Sales were 30% up year on year with the average value up 22%. Despite overall industry figures decreasing year on year, Holidaysplease continues to trade strongly despite current economic situations.

It seems holiday makers are favouring the value of expertise rather than low cost holidays in 2012 with many consumers being more careful as to which travel companies to trust. Perhaps this is another reason behind the success experienced by the ABTA approved luxury holiday company, Holidaysplease.

Richard Dixon, senior director of Holidaysplease, said “The fantastic growth in sales reflects general interest and our dedicated sales team have and will continue to respond to customer demands and trends individually. We are lucky to have a team consisting of real travel experts and we look forward to growing our team as well as our sales throughout 2012.”

The January boom has also helped to identify the top destinations for 2012. These include the likes of the Maldives, Mauritius, the USA, Antigua, Malaysia, as well as Thailand, UAE, Sri Lanka and even Mexico.

As 2011 draws to an end, Travel Association ABTA today released its Travel Trends Report for 2012. I think I speak for all of us when I say how quickly 2011 has flown by yet so much has happened within the travel industry. Let’s not forget the natural disasters affecting millions of lives and disrupting thousands of travel plans including the volcanic ash clouds, Japan earthquake and the Thailand floods. Also numerous travel companies went in to administration this year and hundreds of high street travel shops across the country were forced to close, causing further disruption and worry. Despite all this gloom, overall holiday bookings were up in 2011 with the help of the Royal wedding.

While the UK itself is still finding its way out of economic turmoil, holiday makers will favour value for money as opposed to the cheapest holidays in 2012. A demand in luxury and all-inclusive breaks look set to be popular as the mid-market is predicted to be squeezed. ABTA also reveal that cruising, adventure, exploration, learning and activity holidays will be top of the charts in the New Year as consumers look for new experiences highlighted by a need for value for money.

As several consumers set to reduce their household expenditures and many travel companies continue to fall into administration, this is likely to make holidaymakers more careful as to where they spend their money in 2012. Therefore bookings through traditional yet protected travel agents will increase with travellers seeking reputable and secure companies. As a result, tailored, specialist and authentic local experiences from food to entertainment will be in demand.

The over 55 market looks set to be stronger than ever with around 10% of the market taking over four foreign holidays in the last 12 months. More couples are also expected to tie the knot abroad in 2012 because of budget issues. According to ABTA, 20% of couples who say ‘I do’ overseas save a huge £12,500 compared to marrying in the UK.

And last but not least, it looks as though the favourite holiday destinations for 2012 are once again the ‘tried and tested’ ones. These include the US, Spain, Italy, Greece and France. However, Jordan, Columbia and Cape Verde are set to be hot up and coming spots as well as Poland/Ukraine where Euro 2012 will be hosted next summer.

So let’s see what the next 12 months hold for the travel market, here’s to a fantastic 2012. Happy New Year to you all!

Airports create the perfect shopping environment; people are in the holiday spirit, pockets full of spending money with time to kill before boarding. However the stores might not always be as competitive as we perceive them to be.

Have you ever wondered whether you’re still getting a good deal at airport duty free stores? We were interested to know whether duty free products really were cheaper online or on the high street so we decided to do some mystery shopping to find out. We investigated a selection of 15 electrical products from iPads to netbooks from Dixons and after some careful comparison we found that all the products were cheaper at the airport, with some products costing up to 20% less.

It’s often difficult to beat online retailers but our research just proves that when it comes to buying electrical items you could be in for a pleasant discount the next time you travel.

It looks as though more of our fellow travel agents will be losing their jobs this week as it was announced today that Thomas Cook is the next travel company looking to restructure and cost-save. Europe’s second largest travel group is expecting to close 200 of its 1,350 travel agency branches making many people jobless just before for Christmas.

An estimated 1,000 jobs will be at risk as Thomas Cook review the business and its financial results with those affected being told on Wednesday. This comes after last month’s event which forced the travel group to arrange a new £200 million revolving credit facility with 17 lenders. 

Thomas Cook have described the reports as a speculation and have yet to confirm whether jobs are at risk. Nevertheless Morgan Stanley analysts have commented that restructuring costs and redundancy payments will set the company back £100 million.

HolidaysPlease are always looking for professional travel consultants to join their friendly team. With our homeworking vacancies you can enjoy great flexibility whilst achieving a higher level of reward than working in a high street travel agent. For further information visit our job vacancy section.

In lock, stock and two smoking barrels there is the immortal line “Can everyone please stop getting shot”. Well, at the moment I feel like saying “Can everyone please stop going bust”.

I only get to write a blog post every couple of weeks at the moment and when I do it seems to coincide with another holiday company going under.

This one was not very surprising as Holidays4U was known to operate on wafer thin margins. If you assume Holidays 4U had 100,000 passengers a year then on their turnover of £35m it puts an average holiday value of £350. I would guess around 5% margin which is about £17.50 profit per holiday. You can’t run a travel business on this sort of margin.

My advice is when you shop around and you find one holiday company that is significantly cheaper than others then it’s probably too good to be true. In this case go with the next cheapest instead.

Sure, companies will quote ABTA or ATOL protection but this only gets your money back rather than guaranteeing a holiday when a company goes bust. It can take quite a bit of paperwork and time to get the money back.

The best form of protection is not to have the company go bust in the first place.

No sooner had I blogged about what a shame it was for Hotel Connect to go bust I now find out that things have gone from bad to worse for some customers. So bad, that in my opinion money has been stolen from customers …..

I have found a couple who traveled to the USA having paid for their holiday in full via Hotel Connect. However while they were on holiday they found that they had been charged for the holiday again. This time by the hotel.

When the customer queried this, the hotel said that they hadn’t received the payment from Hotel Connect and that staff at Hotel Connect had told them to take the payment again from customers. Apparently an e mail had been sent from Hotel Connect instructing this.

The usual procedure would be to tell the customer before they travel and give them the option to pay again or to cancel the holiday. In either case the customer would hopefully be able to claim for the loss on insurance or through schemes such as ATOL. However what is not acceptable is to just take the customer’s money without asking.

The couple in question were still on holiday in Las Vegas and only found out that the money had been taken from their account when they ran out of spending money quicker than they thought!

Personally  taking someone else’s money without their authority is surely theft?

It is with far too much frequency that I write about another travel company going under. This time it’s hotel specialist Hotel Connect.
The frightening thing about this insolvency was that Hotel Connect was generally regarded in the industry as being well run with good people and good technology. Other insolvencies have generally been from low cost operators who get caught out when their wafer thin margins are unable to absorb a big event like a credit crunch, airline strike, civil unrest or volcanic ash.

More than 90% of Hotel Connect’s business came from travel agencies rather than direct from the public and so perhaps it is as much a reflection on the state of the agency market at the moment as their own business.

It is no secret that consumers are a lot more confident these days booking simple hotel bookings themselves direct with the hotel, especially on short breaks or European trips. They are increasingly turning away from agencies to book these simple trips.

Because of the sheer number of travel companies going under at the moment I have produced a guide to help you assess whether a travel company you are thinking of using is low, medium or high risk. Just visit:-

Holiday Company Risks – How to spot risky travel companies

If you want any further advice on what to do if your holiday company goes bust or if you want an opinion on a company you are thinking of using then feel free to leave a comment.

UK holiday company Dream Ticket went into administration on Monday 23rd May 2011 leaving over 4,000 holidaymakers’ holiday plans in doubt.

Luxury holiday company Holidays Please has however uncovered details of the insolvency that call into question how the how sale was handled. They found that the sale of £30m turnover Dream Ticket was effectively “done and dusted” within 48 hours with just one company being able to fulfill the criteria in a 24 hour bidding process.

And the company that managed to get notice of the sale and be the only company to meet this 24 hour deadline?

They are a company called Tropical Sky and it just so happens that their auditors were the company appointed to run the bidding process.

If the sale process is found to have been a closed shop rather than a fair and open process then the creditors, customers and employees of Dream Ticket may have a claim against the people handling the administration.

For the full investigation and to see the report visit Dream Ticket or Holiday nightmare?

Yesterday saw Chancellor George Osbourne bring some good news for the travel industry in this year’s budget. It was announced that Air Passenger Duty (APD) will not be increasing this year. Osbourne told how he will be delaying the increase until next year due to the heavy rises in tax last year.

It was also confirmed that talks will be starting today regarding the system of distance banding used for the tax. These talks will review the “rather arbitrary nature of the banding system which appears to consider the Caribbean to be further away than parts of the US and Hawaii,” he commented.

APD will now be extended to private jets too so that APD taxation does not have to be increased. He said “the wealthiest should not escape the tax the ordinary holidaymaker has to pay.” The hefty rise in last year’s duty and the increasing cost pressures on families was the reason behind the delay in the APD rise.

Osbourne further added that he wanted to replace APD with a per plane duty. However current international laws permit this, and so the UK government will now be working to change this law.

What did you make of Chancellor George Osbourne’s 2011 budget? Are you happy with the freeze in APD or do you think better changes should have been made instead? Let us know your opinions by leaving your comments below.

As we kiss goodbye to Kiss flights, we throw them on to the pile of broken holiday companies such as Destinations for Africa, Monster travel, Goldtrail, Sun4U and many more who have gone under this summer.

The scary thing is the last two words in the above sentence “this summer”. It is the summer when travel firms have the most cash and shouldn’t go bust. They should be sitting on large cash balances from customers waiting to travel over the summer period.

What this means is that, unfortunately, there are a number of travel companies who will probably be using this temporary positive cash flow to keep them going when they are actually doomed. As the Autumn progresses and the bookings start to dry up so will the cash flow and more travel companies are likely to hit the wall.

So as a consumer what can you do to protect yourself when you are booking your next holiday? Here are some recommended steps:-

1) Make sure that your holiday is ATOL protected so if the tour operator or airline go bump you will get a refund (or get repatriated free of charge if you are left stranded overseas).

2) If you are using a travel agent then make sure they are ABTA protected.

3) Pay on a credit card rather than debit card as sometimes your credit card company will be able to get a refund for you

4) Take out high end travel insurance. While it probably won’t cover you for the whole cost of the holiday they can cover you for ancillary costs (such as hotel stays etc..) if there are delays on flights.

5) Search for any signs of financial problems with the company that you are looking to book with. Search on google for terms such as the “[name of holiday company] redundancies” and “[name of holiday company] financial loss”

6) Look for holiday companies that sell what the industry call “long haul” holidays. These are holidays that are to far away destinations outside Europe. These companies are likely to have much smoother sales throughout the year rather than the the feast and famine that can kill short haul travel companies.

7) Do not book with any companies that are a lot cheaper than other companies. If there is a holiday company that is significantly cheaper than prices advertised elsewhere then they are likely to be trading on wafer thin margins. This means they won’t have much of a buffer when things go wrong. It is better to pay £50 more for your holiday and enjoy it rather than lose the whole cost of the holiday.

There are many thousands of travel companies in the UK and probably only a dozen or two will go bust over the next few months and so you will be very unlucky if you pick the wrong one. Hopefully if you follow the tips above you will decrease your chances of being one of the unlucky ones.

To book an ATOL protected holiday from an ABTA regulated travel agent then of course you can always try Holidays Please!