PALMA
ENGLAND'S poor World Cup performance may not have done much for English football but it has apparently sparked a huge surge in demand for last minute summer holidays with Majorca one of the most sought after destinations.
According to Lowcostholidays.com, they have reported that within an hour of Germany defeating England, they experienced a surge of 40 percent in web traffic compared with the previous weeks.
The top selling destinations were Turkey, Ibiza and Majorca, demand for the latter up 60 percent compared to the previous Sunday.
According to Google, there has been a sudden interest in holidays right across the market and bookings could jump by as much as 15 percent in the wake of England crashing out of the World Cup.
Apparently, when England exited the World Cup in 2006, travel searches and sales shot up by 15 percent and the Co-operative Travel last week estimated that England's failure to progress past Germany could be worth more than one million pounds per day to the UK travel industry as a whole.
GREAT DEALS
Head of product at Lowcostholidays.com said that they knew many people were waiting to see how far England would get in the tournament before booking a sunshine holiday and by the looks of the movement on the market, nobody is wasting any time in snapping up some of the great deals that are on offer. As travel industry sources in the UK have been explaining to the Bulletin over the past few months, there are various factors which could work in the island's favour this year.
Hugh Morgan, who tomorrow takes over a new post as head of all six tour operators which form part of the Monarch Group, said that holiday sales started rising on the day before the England game.
I don't know if people had lost any hope in the team going through but we experienced an increase in trade of between 23 and 33 percent, depending on the tour group, and by the end of Sunday trade has risen again by similar figures and this continued on Monday.
Even though the weather's been great here, it's raining now though, I think people got a taste for the sunshine and immediately lost all interest in the football and decided to book a holiday.
Hopefully the trend will continue. Historically the market has always picked up sharply after the World Cup, hence we put our prices up straight away knowing that demand would rise this time and the market as a whole made the right call.
The players might not have done themselves any favours, but they've certainly done the travel industry a major one, added Morgan yesterday.
However, those rushing to book a holiday to Turkey and Greece could be disappointed with both destinations reportedly suffering from problems with over booking while it appears that families planning an all inclusive break in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico are being put off by the BP oil spill.
STRONGER POUND
And, the rise in strength of the Pound against the Euro is also making Spain and the Balearics, Majorca and Ibiza in particular, far more attractive again.
Tourism spending figures and hotel over night stays for May were both up, the latter for the first time in two years here in Majorca, and if the UK market forecast proves correct, June could see the situation improve even more for the Balearic tourist industry with hoteliers offering special deals to stimulate sales knowing it would be a late booking season and new flight connections taking off next month.
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