“There is no doubt that the next season will be good, although we must be cautious“, said Iago Negueruela, Balearic Minister of Tourism, after meeting the previous day with tour operators such as EasyJet and TUI and yesterday with representatives of ABTA (the Association of British Travel Agents). He ended that last meeting, he confessed, “with the peace of mind that the islands will continue to be one of the leading destinations in 2023, even in this situation of uncertainty that we live in”.
Calm, for example, knowing from ABTA that if things go wrong, if the crisis worsens in the United Kingdom, “if the British market has to sacrifice days or reduce costs, they will eliminate long-haul before short trips,” explains Negueruela: “In other words, in that case we would even be boosted in the Balearic Islands”. In this, he adds, “TUI also agrees, which does not raise doubts even in this situation of uncertainty.
With EasyJet, the Balearic Minister says that “they even talked about collaborating on pioneering sustainability projects, as they see that the Balearic Islands are one of the most committed to sustainability. TUI also wants to collaborate”.
The British “are not going to sacrifice” their vacations because they believe that the crisis “will not last long”, only a couple of years
Everything seems to be going well for the coming season, although everyone warns that it is still early days. Alejandro Sancho, president of Fomento de Turismo, assures that the various tour operators with whom he has met “consider that 2023 looks good”. Although they do not yet offer percentage data on bookings, they do provide information that gives an idea of what the trend is: the sales of the last 90 days, which are the same as a year ago. The most important thing, says Sancho, is that everyone agrees that the coming months of December and January will return to what they were before the pandemic, that is, potential British travelers will buy their packages in advance, as in the past: “This year they will not wait until the last minute as they did in 2022, because in many cases they then had nowhere to go or vacations had become very expensive”. With the Christmas bonus, sales will start to soar. Fitur, which is held in January, will be the ideal barometer to measure how the next season will go, says Sancho.
The British will return in December and January to buy their packages in advance, as they used to do in the past, he said.
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