The travel industry has shot itself in the arm by undermining the work it has previously done on educating consumers to book early. That was a key takeaway from Abta’s annual Travel Trends conference, during a panel session titled ‘Booking patterns, extending the summer season and changes in consumer behaviour’ which discussed the return of extreme booking patterns.
Dean Harvey, marketing director, Hotelplan described how the industry had been making good progress in educating the market to book early. “But then Covid happened and now we’re discounting again and we’ve re-educated the public to wait for the deal – we’re our own worst enemy in that,” he said.
