A Scottish travel agency chief has said it is seeing a "mass return" to high street outlets as people continue to prioritise holidays despite spending constraints.
Jacqueline Dobson, president of Barrhead Travel, said next year is expected to bring similar levels or more of holiday spend in a look ahead.
Ms Dobson said: "This year has shown that despite market challenges, holidays remain a spending priority for people across the country, and next year we expect most people will spend at least the same, or more, on holidays than they did during 2023.
"However, as people look to manage and spread out their spending, we have noticed that customers are booking earlier than usual – we’re already ahead for summer 2024 compared with this time last year for summer 2023."
READ MORE: Airline announces expansion of Italy programme
The executive continued: "Another reason for booking earlier is to secure the best availability, particularly with the high demand for the most popular locations such as Tenerife, Turkey, Mallorca, Florida, and New York."
The company earlier reported its best summer departures to date at 56% higher than last year and 26% higher compared with 2019 figures, its last record-breaking year.
The agent said then that that "industry levels have returned to normal" following the pandemic, with the firm reporting seven consecutive record-breaking months since the beginning of 2023.
READ MORE: Edinburgh opening planned for hotel chain
Ms Dobson continued: "Value for money will remain a top priority, and we are seeing people being more flexible with where they are travelling to make their budget go further.
"All-inclusive is making up more than one in four new bookings for next year as people look to budget in advance and spend less when away. Cruise holidays will also be high on the list for travellers who are looking to both enjoy value for money and visit multiple destinations in one go."
READ MORE: Lush opens in former Borders bookstore
The agent added: "We know how important holidays are to people, especially with families, and we are seeing demand for multigenerational holidays continue to rise as people go away as part of a large family group to make the most of spending time together – and we expect this to continue into 2024.
"Travel agents have shown why the high street is so important - from taking advantage of deals, to peace of mind and financial protection, we’re seeing a mass return to reputable travel agents. We expect to see the retail high street travel agent continue to be a huge growth area for travel in 2024."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel