Britons warm to holiday home scheme

THE new High Street holiday home scheme launched by Thomson Holidays just ten days ago in the UK is attracting huge interest from potential property buyers. Thomson Holidays, in association with Parador Properties, started selling holiday homes in Spain, Portugal and Cyprus, alongside holidays just ten days ago and the response has already proved encouraging. Thomson Holidays told the Bulletin this week that within just the first few hours of trading yesterday, after the Bank Holiday, they handled 100 calls. Since then, 450 “serious” clients have been logged out of “at least” 1'000 inquiries. “Obviously we are not going to log everyone, some people may be just curious clients, but we have 450 serious potential property buyers on our books already,” the Thomson source said. The big area of interest is Spain, in particular Majorca. “Portugal is still a relatively new destination while Cyprus is obviously much smaller so there is more limited interest.” While still in its early days, the success of the scheme will come as good news to real estate groups Kuhn & Partner and Engel & Volkers. They each have around 20 offices in Majorca alone, and are currently in negotiations with other tourism groups to start offering the same service. Travel experts in the UK forecast last year that residential tourism, holiday homes, is going to become a very important feature of the holiday industry in the future. This is why the main tour operators are adapting their services and products. What is more, tour operators and real estate groups appear to be very compatible.
Thomson Holidays explained that, once a client has expressed a serious interest in an overseas property purchase, the next step is to, either book an inspection trip with Thomson Holidays, or attend one of the many overseas property showcases held around Britain to gather further information before deciding upon their next move.