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In this video you’ll hear from easyJet holidays’ head of trade distribution Natasha Marson.

How to sell city and short breaks 

In the video you’ll hear about updates to easyJet’s winter routes and where the operator has key summer availability, but don’t forget it also has an impressive city and short breaks range.

Marson explains: “People don’t just want a full seven-night break, they’re taking four and five nights, and then for city breaks it’s three and two night durations. And we can accommodate all of that for trade agent partners. Don’t be frightened to be advertising five, four, three and two nights, and really get those city and short breaks moving for your customers. They can take more holidays if they do it that way and actually it saves them a little bit as well.

"We’ve got 70 city break destinations now in our portfolio. Our fantastic product team have loaded thousands more products, so there’s a lot more hotels within that city break and short break range. When they book a city break package it really does make exploring all those top destinations effortless, such as Rome, Paris and Krakow.

In all of those gorgeous destinations we’ve got flights, accommodation and we provide that choice of luggage. So it’s really up to the customer to choose what they want to do in terms of taking luggage. And again, it depends on how long they’re going for, whether it’s five, four, three or two nights. It’s all wrapped up in one easy package. It provides all that peace of mind for customers. 

"Don’t forget our social media tool within the trade portal, where you can download social media posts and window posters to promote specific packages.”

Transcript 

With easyJet holidays’ head of trade distribution Natasha Marson and TTG’s content writer Charlotte Cullinan. 

Charlotte: Welcome to our latest In the Spotlight video with easyJet holidays. Now, Tash, you launched holidays to Cape Verde last year. Tell us about your exciting updates to the programme that agents need to know about.

Natasha: Absolutely. We launched the fantastic Island of Sal back in November last year and that was a direct route from Gatwick and that’s three times a week. That route is still running and all of those great holidays depart from this April, which is brilliant.

So we had incredible feedback from our travel agent and trade partners. Everybody said Tash, we really need a northern route. So we’re really excited to share that we took everybody’s feedback on board. So we now got this fantastic route from Manchester, which departs from this October. All the way through now, right the way through to summer 2026, which is fantastic.

And we’ve got really great prices. We’ve got that great range of Melia hotels. And they also include the VIP packages, which give everybody’s customers access to the exclusive restaurants and all of those fabulous areas throughout the hotel range, as well as full access to other Melia hotels within that area.

But not only that we’ve also got the fabulous five-star Royal Horizon Ponta Sino on sale. Now this is a brand-new family-friendly hotel. It’s all-inclusive. It’s a real gem. Again, excellent price point.

But that’s not all. We’ve also added five other new routes for this winter 2025, and that includes Lanzarote from London Southend and also Birmingham. And then we’ve got gorgeous Gran Canaria from Liverpool and Salzburg and Barcelona also again from Southend.

Charlotte: Oh, that’s wonderful to hear. Thank you. And summer 2025 lates are approaching. So tell us what’s selling, where have you got availability and where those all-important free kids places are.

Natasha: So there’s a real mixture of things going on right now. Everybody that hasn’t already booked their summer 2025 holiday are now itching and they’re searching and they want to be inspired.

So what’s booking right now, really at the minute and where we’ve got key availability – Turkey is a fantastic destination, and so Antalya and Dalaman always sell really well, but also have tons of availability. A firm favourite for everybody at the minute is Hurghada.

That is flying off the shelves, great price point, beautiful product again. So those are the destinations that are doing well along with your standard – your Antalya, Mallorca, Tenerife doing really well. Again, we’ve got really excellent price point across all of these destinations. So I just encourage everybody to snap those prices up now. My thought process really for our agent partners is create that urgency with your customers. Don’t let them wait now any longer, really, for summer 25.

But what else is happening where we’ve got lots of availability? The Algarve, again, a firm favourite lots of availability there. Again, brilliant price point. Really lovely family friendly product as well. The Greek Islands, I’d shout out Rhodes and Zante at the moment. Again, plenty of availability. I think people will now start to think about Greece because the season starts earlier and earlier each year.

So towards the end of April, beginning of May, absolutely brilliant time to be booking and jetting off to those gorgeous Greek gems. You asked me about free child places. We’ve done a brilliant job at the minute. We’ve loaded lots and lots of free child places. I’m going to quote millions.

So there’s bucket loads of free kids’ places. Turkey I’ve already shouted out. So Antalya you’ll find lots of free child places also including the beautiful Anda Barut Collection. Trade love that selection of properties, customers love it as well.

So have a look at that Majorca for free kiddies, including the selection of Fergus and Zafiro hotels. I’m going to shout out Crete here because the Stella Palace Aqua Park Resort is a beautiful product. Also the Atlantica Hotels in Cyprus, fabulous and with plenty of availability at the moment with those free kids’ places. So there’s a whole plethora there really for people to start to showcase, advertise and talk to customers about.

Remember the call out for everybody – remember the trade portal. So you can search for all of these fantastic inspirational easyJet holidays on the trade portal. If you want to find your free kid place, for anybody that doesn’t know, you can do that by using the holidays dropdown on the top menu and clicking free child places.

It’s very simple, our portal to use.

Charlotte: Fabulous. Thank you. And finally, tell us what’s coming up for Team Orange.

Natasha: Oh, my life. So we’ve got an action packed agenda already. The guys have got our fantastic trade distribution managers. We’ve got six of the guys which are managing both commercial and boots on the ground activity, but we’ve really planned well this year.

Our team orange on tour, our Toots. We’re famous for the Toots.They’re back out in full force right now. We’ve got the Unpacked Fam trip, which will be happening, can’t really say where that is yet, but more will be revealed. We’re in the planning stages of the Unpacked Fam. It had great, great engagement last year. I’m pretty sure everybody will want a place on that again this year.

I’m definitely going to try and get myself out for a couple of days to enjoy the fun and really see our fantastic product and our experiences that we’ll be offering on the Unpacked Fam. We’ve also got the Big Orange Makeovers. Those trade agent partners that were incredibly lucky last year that submitted their application forms to qualify to have their branch a little orange makeover. They are actually happening now, which is great. So we’ve got a full calendar this year of where they will be completed.

And then we’ve got lots of fabulous tickets to give away for song contests and yeah, all sorts of exciting events. Too much to talk about.

Charlotte: Brilliant. Thank you for sharing all those updates, Tash. Thank you for watching our In the Spotlight video with easyJet holidays.