Director of sales Ben Ittensohn said the operator’s trade relationships had “gone from strength to strength over the last couple of years”.
The finding came as Explore revealed its top travel trends for the coming year, claiming to have analysed booking patterns across “thousands” of itineraries and passengers.
Among the insights was the continued rise of “slow travel” adventures – with the number of travellers booking walking holidays with Explore up by almost a third on 2019.
More travellers will be joining group tours solo, Explore also claimed, with 67% of the company’s bookings coming from solos – up from 64% in 2019. Average monthly web search volumes for solo travel were also up 52% year on year.
Meanwhile, average spend has increased across most regions – 7% on trip to Europe and 8% for the Americas, while longer-haul itineraries are “selling incredibly well”, according to Explore, with the operator claiming consumers were taking a “carpe diem mindset” having not been able to travel for a couple of years.
Assessing its most popular destinations for 2023, Explore said that while Europe and the UK had been “consistently up” during the pandemic, demand for long-haul destinations was growing fast.
Aside from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, both new countries to Explore’s programme, destinations such as Costa Rica (up 44%), Egypt (up 124%) and Morocco (up 34%) were currently enjoying “great demand”.
Polar expeditions are selling strongly for 2023, according to Explore, with bookings leaning in favour of Antarctica, while other “bucket list” trips such as climbing Kilimanjaro (up 9%), a Maldives Dhoni boat cruise (up 17%) and trekking the Inca Trail (up 37%) have seen similar growth.
Online search terms such as ‘ultimate bucketlist’ and ‘bucketlist ideas’ were also up 39% post-Covid.
Habits for how consumer book will likely shift in 2023, Explores claims, with travellers booking much closer to departure, with operator finding the average time between booking and travelling for summer 2022 was 131 days – almost seven weeks later than for summer 2019.
