Travel with Katie Butler: Holidays remain a spending priority

'Sunshine Saturday' at Total Travel, the first Saturday in January and often the busiest day of the year.

Katie Butler, Total Travel, writes: It has been an absolutely amazing start to 2024 and it is looking like we could be in for a record-breaking month for new bookings.

Last week we found time to get up to speed with the ABTA 'Destinations to Watch' report which offers holidaymakers inspiration for their trips and insight on places they anticipate will become increasingly popular with the UK traveller.

The recent research found that 64 per cent of people will travel abroad over the next 12 months. If those numbers become a reality, then the percentage of people travelling will be in line with 2019 which was a bumper year for travel.

Holidaymakers are also expected to embrace their more curious side when it comes to the destinations they choose to visit. Almost half (47 per cent) of people say they plan to visit a new city or resort they have never been to this year and 41 per cent plan to head to a country they have never been to before.

As travel agents it is a question we ask with every customer – is there anywhere you don't want to go? The most common answer is a destination they have already travelled to.

It certainly is a big world out there and I personally like to travel to new places that I have not visited before. The top ten destinations making the list are Albania, Aruba, Crete, Extremadura in Spain, Mauritius, Saxony in Germany, Shropshire in the UK, The Tyrol in Autria/Italy, Vietnam and The Zambia.

Holidays remain a spending priority. ABTA also stated that it would be remiss to talk about travel this year without reflecting on the wider economic picture. Households continue to face a squeeze on their finances due to the rising cost of living, and the economic situation remains uncertain. But data from ABTA and the wider industry continues to show the appetite for travel remains, with holidaymakers looking to cut back on other purchases before they sacrifice their holiday.

This said, as busy as we have been we have also seen a higher amount of holiday cancellations and changes to later dates compared to what we usually experience at this time of year. The volume of new bookings and new customers is enough to counteract this for us but we can definitely see that many are feeling the squeeze.

January always brings a mixed bag of destinations and dates of travel. We have made a huge amount of bookings to New York to travel next December which of course is the most popular time to travel, as most want to be there for the lighting of the Rockerfellar tree. As flights only come out 11 months in advance then January is the best time to book to get the best prices.

Summer holidays were also extremely popular with Tenerife and Majorca claiming the most booked destinations last week. The top selling month to travel was May, after all it is the start of the summer season and offers some great prices if you are able to travel outside the school holidays. Last year Turkey was without doubt the top-selling destination at Total Travel and I can't wait to see if it will retain top spot.