McAuley, managing director B2B tour operations, dnata Travel Europe, said she saw options to expand the brands’ product portfolios amid the coronavirus crisis, as long as the opportunities were “warranted and commercially viable”.

“In the conversations I’ve had so far I don’t see us dropping anywhere from our portfolio, but I do see the opportunities for us to add to it,” she told TTG’s Digital Destinations Festival on Monday (11 May). 

“We’ve had a conversation about [expanding domestic],” said McAuley, but stressed it was “just too early at the moment to green-light anything”.

“We have it [domestic] on sale now anyway via the feeds that we take, but you also run the risk of digressing too much from your core product and that’s not necessarily and good thing to do either. So I think we’ve got to be careful of ‘is this a long-term trend or a short-term opportunity?’”

Europe traditionally accounts for 5% of sales made by Gold Medal and Travel 2 – a figure McAuley said she believed would increase post-coronavirus. 

“I do think there will be an opportunity coming out of this to sell more European business and villas may form a part of that as well,” she said, adding a likely expansion of rail holidays for Gold Medal and Travel 2 was also on the cards. 

“If it’s a long-term trend then we’ll adjust accordingly but if it’s just a short-term opportunity I don’t want to deal with a flash-in-the-pan win. It needs to form part of a longer strategy.”