Travel with Katie Butler: LBA to Morocco with Jet2holidays

Katie Butler, Total Travel, writes: The Tui aircraft was due to land at the regional airport on its way home from Corfu when it came off the runway and took to the surrounding grass. Thankfully, there were no reported injuries from the incident and all passengers and crew disembarked safely.

However, the incident did result in the airport closing until the following day, meaning delays and cancellations.

Unfortunately, a handful of our customers were impacted by the closure with some delayed for several hours in overseas airports. We managed to contact all our impacted passengers and check on their wellbeing and thankfully most were home the same day, albeit diverted to more northern airports.

We have received several calls asking if a compensation claim can be submitted. Bad weather is considered an extraordinary circumstance and unfortunately if you were delayed due to the weather you will not be entitled to claim against the airline.

However, depending on the length of your delay you may be able to claim through your travel insurance.

As many of you know, I get really excited when new products or routes present themselves, and so last week I was delighted to see a brand new route from Jet2holidays who have announced they will now be flying all year round to Morocco, with flights from Manchester and also Leeds Bradford.

The services to both the beautiful beach locations of Agadir and the classic city of Marrakesh will start in October 2024 and run through winter 2024/5 and into the following summer.

Also, exciting news that Marella Cruises have launched their summer 2025 programme which will include sailings from Cyprus, opening up Cyprus as an offering on their ‘cruise and stay’ itineraries.

Looking back at this time last year, unbelievably, I was writing about Covid restrictions.

It was around this time last year that Spain and New Zealand dropped their final restrictions and requirements around Covid vaccines and testing for travel purposes. It certainly feels so much longer than just a year ago.

Last week late bookings remained strong, with the miserable weather being consistent so did the demand for late bookings and some last chance sunshine. Late bookings dominated overall sales accounting for 31 per cent of our total bookings.

Top selling destinations for the last week of summer 2023 were Turkey and Lanzarote.

Top sellers for the winter season were Tenerife and Lanzarote, and Summer 2024 saw Turkey and Crete take top spot.

We now start to enter our quieter weeks of trading in the run up to Christmas and no doubt we will start to see a shift in trend, I expect to see more of next year summer bookings coming through.

Countdown to conference, just four weeks to go until we venture on the Jet2holidays VIP agent event in Turkey. Watch this space!