The OTA, which has existed for only 10 years, is now licensed for 2.45 million passengers compared with 1.85 million last year and only 1.37 million pre-pandemic. Loveholidays’ other market, Ireland, will bring its total to more than three million passengers this year, it believes.
Donat Retif, Loveholidays’ Belgian chief executive, joined the London-based OTA in December 2019. “I’m not a travel guy, the one thing I was promised was that travel was exciting,” he told TTG as the firm’s new Atol status was confirmed.
And so it proved – Covid meant for two years he was “completely under the cosh” but at the same time ensured the brand had a future. “The one thing we did very well was to double down on investment," Retif continued.
"In a crisis, if you cut costs, you get out of the crisis in a very weak position. Everybody knew travel would bounce back, so we doubled down on our investment. It’s allowed us to get out of the gates faster than our competitors, but if someone had told me we would double the number of passengers after Covid, I would not have believed them.”
Retif said he was “very optimistic” about the UK market. “Our financial year begins on 1 November and we are very satisfied about Q1, even with the concerns about cost of living and inflation. We have not seen softness in any of our markets.”
This will not, however, encourage him to launch a trade brand. When asked, it’s a simple “no”, with plans only to duplicate the current formula.
Adding almost 600,000 more passengers compared with last year is not a matter of seeking new suppliers, he explained, but it will see the brand – which sells mainly four and five-star short-haul beach – move into new markets, most notably long-haul and city breaks.
“We work with bed banks, so it’s not about more inventory, it’s about better inventory," he explained. "We offer a lot more choice; we have 36,000 hotels – two-and-a-half times more than any other website.”
The potential package combinations reach more than 500 billion, he added.
’Next gig’
Retif believes the brand has some of the most intuitive and fastest technology to be had. Another factor in its success is offering value via £25 deposits and monthly instalment payments. “That’s unlike the airlines, where you have to pay immediately – we’re democratising travel.”
Describing the Loveholidays formula, he said: “We have the volume, but we have better deals and some direct contracting – that allows us to have better pricing”.
The formula will soon be extended to new markets. “Our next gig is going to other countries. This year, we will launch in one other European country. We also want long-haul beach and city breaks.”
Retif would not be drawn on which new market the OTA will seek to break into, but he added it was not his Belgian homeland. He described himself as “not a travel person” – “I’m a customer-focused CEO. My last three companies have been more tech but I’m not a tech guy. We are a tech business in travel.”
This, he said, was underlined by the use of artificial intelligence via chatbots. “We started using AI over two years ago out of necessity during Covid," he continued. "Before Covid, we averaged 20,000 customer requests such as booking changes. During Covid it was 360,000, like everybody else, we were under the cosh, so we invested in chatbots.”
The busy bots now handle 900,000 requests a year, nearly two-thirds within 41 seconds, but he Retif insisted: “If the chatbot can’t answer a question, you talk to an agent.”
’Massive progress’
Moreover, AI does not mean Loveholidays can dispense with staff – it plans to recruit 110 people this year at its London base. “We will be 350 people by the end of this year, we are doubling the number of staff since pre-Covid.” A third of these will be in customer services but the majority will be IT roles.
Finding yourself the third-biggest Atol holder after only a decade is an achievement, and Retif is rightly proud. “Three million passengers for a company only created 10 years ago is massive,” he said.
Nevertheless, a top three ranking does not seem to have been the aim. “It doesn’t really matter," Retif added. "What matters is we continue to increase our passenger numbers – and they come back more often.”
