Speaking at Hays Travel’s retail conference in the Algarve on Tuesday (14 November), Dame Irene said the business had "never seen such polarisation" when it came to consumer spending patterns, adding: "we intend to invest in a second peak for lates".

"We believe 2024 will be the year of two peaks,” she said, nodding to “sufficient evidence” of consumers not spending quite so much in January and February because they “want to hold on to their money a bit longer”, and some pent-up demand post-Covid being unwound.

She was speaking as Hays Travel announced a tripling of profits for its fiscal year 2022/2023, compared to the previous year, and a doubling of its total transactional value.

Pointing to research from PwC that highlighted the intention of 70% of consumers to spend at least as much on their holiday – if not more – in 2024 compared to 2023, Hays noted the opportunity of the 30% who are not sure where their holiday plans lie. “It’s those people we have to convert to taking a holiday,” she said.

But she alluded to the increased holiday spend in 2023 across all consumers – which for Hays Travel accounted for a 16.8% rise in 2023 compared to 2022 so far.

“It’s a return to humanity, a return to spending time with family and friends,” she said, adding that consumers were prioritising holiday spend over buying “things”.

But "not all of our customers are travelling yet", Hays warned and “we have put significant investment into our marketing campaign for the turn of the year”, in a bid to make 2024 the year “of the best peaks ever”.

Hays turned her attention to cementing Hays Travel as an “anti-fragile” organisation, by asking agents to accept the volatility and uncertainty in today’s world as “replacing the sense of certainty and familiarity we were used to”. 

She highlighted Hays Travel’s strong balance sheet, zero debt and supplier relationships as bolstering the agency’s position.

“Anti-fragile means people in organisations who trust the folk making the decisions and that they are making the right decisions for the right reasons,” she said.