The package holiday brand has grown ten-fold in the five years since it was established, which chief executive Garry Wilson suggested meant market leadership was feasible.
Speaking at the launch of easyJet’s new Southend base on Monday (31 March), Wilson said: “We are well on our way on our trajectory and our growth to becoming the UK’s largest travel company and Southend will play a very critical part in that.
"We are looking to grow by 25% this year, and we are planning for that growth to continue in future years.”
The brand is licensed to sell three million holidays this year, compared with market leader Jet2holidays’ seven million. EasyJet sold almost 90 million seats last year and will soon reach the 100 million mark.
“When you look at us going from 300,000 to three million and look at the 5-6% the airline is talking about growing, that’s 100 million passengers in the next few years – there should be an expectation to continue that growth,” Wilson said. “We have the capacity to do it, we have the customer base to do it, we just need to believe.”
He added: “We would not put a timing on it. If the demand is there, if the margin is there, we will put the growth on.”
However, Wilson said the increase in proposed Atol sales was not set in stone. “One of the differences between ourselves and other operators with an airline is we have a very profitable airline, so we don’t have to sell every seat on a package holiday," he continued.
“When we put in for the Atol we look at the optimistic case, but we won’t slavishly sell to that number,” he said, albeit while adding: “We are well on track where we will still fulfil that number and do so very profitably.
"We are cheaper 75% of the time than our competitors, so I have huge optimism for this summer and going forward.”
EasyJet chief executive Kenton Jarvis said growth of packages would be fuelled by “more leisure-based regional airports like Southend”.
Jarvis said the easyJet brand would be responsible for a third of all UK leisure travel growth this year, with Southend representing “8% of that”.
