After a comment from Lee, about a lack of post i though it was time to fire up the blog again!
2009 has started by being incredibily busy. As AffiliateFuture is the market leading travel network, January is therefore one of our biggest months of the year. Many people aren’t aware just how many people book their summer holiday straight after Christmas…well it’s a staggering number that do. With the credit crunch being around we weren’t sure what demand would be like and we’ve been suprised. Package holidays are the star performers at the moment, but the tour operators have been cutting capacity so things will slow. Later in the year you’ll see the dynamically packaged guys really come through – you basically pick your flight and hotel and create your own holiday. Destinations outside of the Euro are working really well, like Egypt but Egypt’s capacity isn’t huge so the likes of Spain will start to wake.
One area struggling is the airlines, you can get a return ticket to New York for £259 and there is plenty of availability. Don’t forget that a large chunk (£210) is tax and fuel supplements so these guys aren’t making much. Hitwise have given figures that traffic is 42% down in this sector, bookings however aren’t as badly hit conversions are really good. Couple that with some cracking commission – Virgin Atlantic are paying 3% to everyone. It’s not all bad.
To keep the blog a little more interesting i’m going to start answering some questions! So fire them over and i’ll post back.
