According to Sheena Whittle, head of the PTAs, since the Biden administration’s announcement in September that fully vaccinated arrivals will be able to visit the US without having to quarantine, couple-centric bookings to the destination have increased.
"The vast majority of our sales are travelling in October, November and December; we’re seeing that very late trend," Whittle told TTG.
"What we’re seeing is that the US holidays that are travelling in December and the early part of next year are very couple-centric rather than family.
"We’re seeing a lot of New York and Vegas bookings, and I think that’s because couples have that confidence of everything running smoothly. Further out we’re seeing Orlando coming in, but closer to Christmas it is more couples than groups."
Whittle also reported the agency saw a 20% increase in bookings on Saturday (9 October) after the Department for Transport slashed the red list.
"Sunday was broadly the same," she continued. "It looks encouraging, I think that’s what we’ve seen over the last few weeks, you have lots of days where you see an increase and then it levels off again.
"But generally, the last three weeks, our sales have increased by 40%. We’re consistently overachieving what we did in 2019, so that three-week-ago point, and this last week, have been the icing on the cake."
The PTAs also plan to implement a peak turn-of-year sales campaign, and reported that over the last few weeks its top-selling month was October, followed by December and November.
Whittle said the company will target peaks as "we normally do", but doesn’t yet know what that will bring.
"We’re going into peaks with generally less availability because a lot of people have either already booked or moved their booking to next summer," Whittle added.
"We will be going out with a campaign, yes we will be giving it everything, what we don’t know yet is how the consumer will respond."
The agency has also announced plans to launch a business insights dashboard for its staff.
