Cruise agents fail to fill growing market

GfK Ascent-MI chief executive Sarah Smalley spoke at the TTA Worldchoice conference held at Heathrow. One of her main points was that UK travel agents were missing the boat on 8-13 night holidays.

She said sails of holiday of this length have increased 25% in bookings for summer 2010, and that the bookings are largely being made direct with cruise companies or through websites like socruise rather than through agents.

This new trend results from cruise passengers being time-poor, possibly because in a recession they prefer not to take too much time off work when economic conditions are volatile and this means the 8-13 night holiday is likely to continue to be a growth sector right through 2010.

She also said that ‘consumer confidence has started to turn a corner’ and that … ‘for the last three months, agents have been increasing their revenues’ but she pointed out that the travel industry's chance of benefitting from the World Cup in South Africa would depend on consumer confidence. There has already been a setback for the cruise industry, after the local government refused to licence several moored cruise ships to act as ‘hotels’ during the World Cup because they didn’t want to deprive hotels on shore of the chance to accommodate football-mad visitors.