The company, which currently has a team of 170 Personal Travel Experts, achieved the record sales figure three days before the end of the month, with sales showing no sign of slowing down.

Managing director Amanda Matthews told TTG Luxury that reaching £10 million in bookings for a single month was a “real milestone” and praised the efforts of Designer Travel’s agents.

She added that bookings had “exploded” in the final three weeks of January – exceeding the company’s expectations at the start of the crucial peaks sales period.

Matthews said sales for January were up by 20% compared with January 2024, when Designer Travel had previously achieved a monthly record for bookings, hitting £9.4 million.

She attributed Designer Travel’s success to being “very flexible” and quick to respond to new trends in an overall market that was “up and down” during January.

“We’re able to react really quickly and follow trends almost on a daily basis,” explained Matthews. “We put out a world cruise on Facebook and got three bookings from that.

“Most of the growth in January has come from new customers – our existing clients are spending about the same with us as they did last year.

“I don’t think the market in January has been brilliant for everybody. It’s been very up and down, so to achieve this milestone is a testament to the amazing people in our business. It’s down to the quality and tenacity of the team members.”

Affordable luxury 

Matthews added that they had seen a growing demand for “affordable luxury”, particularly from families who were looking for “4.5-star and lead-in five-star properties”.

“But we’ve still had at least 20 bookings of more than £50,000 – some lovely high-end bookings,” she said. “Most of our homeworkers are performing really well.”

Designer Travel’s top three destinations in January were Spain, Greece and Turkey, with the US, Italy, Maldives and Thailand also featuring in the top 10. Bookings were “predominantly” for summer 2025 departures with “a lot of winter lates”.

Cruise bookings boom

Matthews said the agency’s cruise bookings had also “exploded” during January, while city breaks had increased year-on-year – primarily to European cities, as well as New York, which has been “flying off the shelves”.

“We are still seeing most durations in the seven to 10 nights range but we’re also getting more longer durations of 10-14 nights,” she added.

“Marketing is really big for us, and we have the ability to use social media very quickly. We can press a button and send offers to everybody’s Facebook – we’ve very quick to react to the market.

“January is our biggest month of the year with February our second biggest. We’ve got our peaks campaign running until the end of February so fingers crossed the momentum will continue.”

In terms of expansion, Matthews said that Designer Travel would continue to only recruit the “right quality” of agents to join its team and had no specific target for the number of homeworkers.

“Our expansion is down to the quality of people that apply and that’s not changed in the nearly 18 years we’ve been going,” she explained. “We turn away more people than we take on.”

While the agency focuses mainly on recruiting experienced agents, it also operates a training academy, which offers an intensive 12-month course for around 12 new-to-travel agents per year.