14 January 2010

What's the bargain summer holiday spot?

Cost conscious travellers are booking summer holidays to Egypt in record numbers due to the weakness of the pound and the disastrous ‘staycation’ summer of 2009, according to lowcostbeds.com.

The company claims to have seen bookings to the country rise by 200% over this time last year.

The other top selling destinations are Tenerife, Greece, Majorca and the Costa Blanca in Spain.

Lowcostbeds has been contracting in new long haul destinations such as Thailand, Sri Lanka, The Maldives, South Africa as well as a number of key US cities.

Group sales director Tim Buckman said: "We’ve done some great deals with our hotel partners enabling us to put in place our ‘price guarantee’ which has been extremely well received by the trade.

"The disappointing weather we had last year has encouraged many people to book early for next summer and take advantage of some of the best deals around."

He added: "We are experiencing a very encouraging start to 2010 with trade sales increasing 111% over the same period in 2009.

"The market was far quicker to return after the new year than in previous years and our price guarantee has been a real hit with agents."

by Phil Davies