In a new Facebook video message to clients, John and Irene Hays revealed the agency had invited "all staff" to come back to work after furloughing "the majority" of its employees earlier this year.

"We just thought we’d give you a quick update on how we’re doing," said Irene. "We’ve invited all of our staff to come back to our work and we’re delighted to say we now have about 3,000 people back answering calls and dealing with issues for you.

"And we’re also seeing quite a bit of interest for holidays later in the year."

John Hays added: "I think people want something to look forward to so demand for winter holidays is really strong in 2020/21, really strong."

He said the independent’s Peace of Mind guarantee was also going down "fantastically well", allowing clients to cancel for any reason up to six weeks before travel and get a refund.

"That’s a wonderful peace of mind guarantee," he said. "It’s going down great."

Last month, the couple apologised for failing to provide clients "the quality of service associated with Hays Travel" owing to the extent to which Hays had leaned on the government’s furlough scheme.

They also revealed that by mid-April, about 2,500 Hays staff had returned to work.