This was the message from Red Sea Holidays managing director Andrew Grant, who told TTG aviation delays were beginning to have a knock-on effect for those looking to book getaways later in the year.
"The prices are sky high for this summer," he said. "Our focus, however, has always been to serve the best interest of our customer. We tried to get as many bookings as we could without passing cost increases on to clients due to the lack of capacity, and we’ve managed to do that.
"We went into this summer with really good bookings levels, and we have managed to secure some capacity, but overall capacity to Egypt at the moment is quite tight."
According to Grant, the collapse of Thomas Cook in September 2019 led to a "sheer loss" of capacity to the destination which has yet to be filled, as currently only two other carriers – Tui and easyJet – fly direct to Egypt from the UK.
"I have never known anything like it," Grant said, speaking about the issues Red Sea has faced over the past few years. "We have come through quite a bit with Red Sea – airline problems, ash clouds, the Thomas Cook collapse – there has always been something going on in the background. The past two years were much worse, and they really came out of nowhere.
"Capacity is tight. Everyone is trying to keep booking levels up while keeping customers happy after the turmoil they faced over the past two years. They don’t want them [customers] to have to rebook again.
"We managed to get some capacity back, but no one has really had the ability to put the capacity on to Egypt."
Grant also revealed the operator was looking to ramp up its trade activity, starting with the appointment of a new trade sales manager.
