First Choice margins “slightly ahead”
Customers are being persuaded to book holidays earlier due to product differentiation across First Choice’s brand portfolio, the group claims.
Revealing that summer 2005 sales are up 18%, with long haul and medium haul outstripping short haul growth, the operator said margins were “slightly ahead” across all sectors against last year.
Mainstream summer 2005 short haul sales are up 2%, medium haul up 19% and long haul up 32%, while winter 2004-05 sales are down 5% in short haul but up 15% in medium haul and up 11% in long haul.
In a trading update at the company’s AGM today, chairman Sir Michael Hodgkinson said the the Asian tsunami disaster on Boxing Day had a “significant impact” on the market in the key first two weeks of January. First Choice has had to absorb more than £1 million of additional costs as a result of the tsunami.
The firm’s online destination services were described as performing well, with accommodation brand Hotelopia having sold 700,000 bednights since the start of the financial year.
First Choice has cut capacity in its mainstream, marine and ski divisions and said the outlook was encouraging, with trading expected to be in line with expectations.
Sir Michael said there was “continuing evidence that our strategy to focus on product differentiation across each of the sectors is resulting in customers bookings holidays earlier”.
He added that in the mainstream sector margins are “slightly ahead” across all destinations “and we are five points further ahead in terms of the percentage of the summer programme sold compared to last year.
Sales at Island Cruises, the joint venture with Royal Caribbean Cruises, are up 36% while overall online sales are up 134%.
The company announced that Royal Caribbean chairman and CEO Richard Fain is standing down from the board on April 1 to be replaced as a non-executive director by the line’s senior vice-president EMEA Susan Hooper. Terry Green is to retire as a non-executive director after eight years on April 1.
Report by Phil Davies
Phil Davies
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