Travel with Katie Butler: We can find a holiday deal to suit you

Katie Butler writes: With Covid restrictions dropping last year, of course we knew and expected that 2022 was going to be a good one, so good that it resulted in our best year ever since our opening in 2013.

I was also conscious at the start of 2023 that of course we were dealing with the cost of living crisis and potentially we could encounter a difficult year, on the back of a couple of pretty severe years due to Covid.

At mid-year we are delighted to be trading 24 per cent up on where we were at the same time last year and we have booked an additional 650 passengers.

Booking with a travel agent certainly seems to be on the up, especially after some of the nightmare stories we have heard from new customers who had booked online throughout the Covid pandemic, and it seems that more and more of you are enjoying speaking face to face with an agent you can contact 24/7. And it's not just us, the whole industry is performing strongly, many back to pre-pandemic levels if not better.

It seems that this year the last thing we want to give up is our annual holiday and that is certainly what many of you are telling us in store.

Holiday prices abroad have increased in cost too. However, we are managing to find better deals if you are flexible. As an example, you may want to fly from Leeds but actually we can find a Free Child Place at the same hotel if you fly from East Midlands.

It could be that you wanted a 14-night holiday but the price is over budget, however, if you instead travel on an 11 night holiday we may be able to get you within budget.

We are finding that rather than sacrifice a holiday altogether, many of our customers are selecting a shorter duration or perhaps dropping a star rating.

We are lucky of course, to have Jet2holidays flying almost daily to numerous destinations from Leeds Bradford and Manchester, enabling us to play around with dates and durations to find you the best deal.

The UK's biggest package holiday company is also the best according to almost 8,000 travellers asked to rate their beach holiday in a recent 'Which' survey. Can you guess which tour operator I am talking about? Of course, I am talking about our very own Yorkshire based company Jet2holidays and we are extremely proud to be a recognised booking agent working closely with them.

Jet2holidays now take nearly six million people on holiday every year, even more than long-standing holiday giant TUI. Well done Jet2 and long may this success continue.

Next week we welcome our travel advisor Karen back from holiday and I can't wait to hear all about her first visit to Turkey.

After a quieter couple of week we are back to being very busy with lots and lots of late deal holidays booked. In fact 38 per cent of new booking last week were to travel within the next 12 weeks. Majorca and Turkey retained top spot for the best selling destinations.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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