US holiday bookings surging ahead

Forget the fall-out from the travel industry’s current crop of short-term nightmares - with forward bookings flowing, prospects for travel to the US this year are creating a warm glow.

Ruby Briggs, managing director of North America Travel Service is one of those experiencing a dramatic turnaround.

“Outside the current set of circumstances we have seen a growth of just under 25 per cent at the end of the first quarter compared with 2009. This has risen from just over 17 per cent at the turn of the year. There are a combination of reasons: our range is very varied, we offer a broad spread outside the most popular destinations and we’re finding that California, Arizona and Nevada are still doing extremely well, sometimes with Hawaii, sometimes not.

“Some of the increase is coming from celebration holidays and we’re also seeing an improvement in the booking period. Last year it had sometimes got down to six weeks but is now four to six months.  It’s encouraging to see the booking period stretched.”

Mike Gurnell, director of El Monte motorhome rentals is also benefiting from longer booking periods.

“People planning a motorhome holiday tend to think about it early as campgrounds can get full in summer.  We’re getting a lot of business from both specialist and traditional tour operators and are generally having a very good year; we’re around 40% up on last year.

“We have some very large luxury motorhomes, ideal for families of four or five and we’re definitely seeing a general interest in ‘light adventure’ holidays.  We are also seeing this with increases in our Cruise West exploration-style voyages to Alaska.”

Also pleased with 2010 bookings is High Clayson, product and marketing manager for Titan Hitours.

“Ever since last summer in fact we’ve seen the market rebound and recover so yes, the market looks quite healthy.  We’re looking to strengthen our programme for 2011 with more departures.
“There is a degree of confidence in the marketplace; customers are not looking to just do the obvious, there’s interest in other places like Oregon and the Southern States.”

More traditional destinations are seeing the biggest booking increases according to Premier Holidays which has seen a 38 per cent increase for the period October 2009 to date.  Hawaii has risen by 80 per cent with Florida and Las Vegas seeing increases of 53 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.