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First Class Holidays to expand Africa and island programmes
First Class Holidays will grow its fledgling Africa programme this year and place a focus on its island product.
The specialist operator launched South Africa last year, and is now looking to expand into other regions and broaden its product range.
“South Africa is doing really well for us,” managing director Dan Gathercole told TTG.
“It’s down to the team we recruited, they are truly passionate about the destination and love to share their knowledge with our agent partners.
“We plan to move the focus into wider Africa longer term, and also focus on our island product.”
Gathercole said First Class would launch Islands by First Class Holidays, building on its current portfolio of Mauritius, Seychelles, Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji and Cook Islands with some “new additions”.
Meanwhile, First Class will guarantee all prices for 2021, and those on early 2022 Australia and New Zealand enquiries.
Gathercole said the move following a spike in forward bookings, and would help agents convert more quotes in what is the operator’s 25th anniversary year.
“We have seen an increase in 2021 and 2022 enquiries, and have worked with our suppliers to contract early booking rates for many hotels and tours,” said Gathercole.
“Flight bookings may be out of date range, but we have a model which is pretty accurate for predicting future prices and we can therefore quote with confidence.
“We have to guarantee the price in order to help the agent convert more bookings as you simply cannot give a customer a quote and say ‘the price may change’.”
James Chapple
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