The travel companies also warned that trading conditions in 2010 would be even tougher than this year, which would lead it to make further capacity cuts this winter to meet the shortfall in demand.
Bookings for the winter season are down 13 percent in the UK and 27 percent in mainland Europe. It estimated that it would cut capacity 6 percent and 7 percent respectively.
Like its rival Tui reported yesterday, Tour operators said it too was experiencing more late bookings for this summer but that the proportion of holidays sold remained similar to last year due to the reductions in capacity.
Bookings for summer 2009 were down 11 percent in the UK and 12 percent in Europe.
The chief executive tour operation, said that he was “not overly worried at this stage”.
He said: “The ski market is only 5 percent down in the UK, and the first month of departures are in good shape,” he said.
“The load factor in the UK is only 3 percent down year on year. We are confident people will book, they are just leaving it later to do so.”
He also said the company was “well-placed”
“It was never a target,” he said. “It was put out in November 2007, when the dollar was two to the pound. We were trying to give the market an idea of the size of the group. The budget we had was somewhat different.”
The company says that the swine flu outbreak in Mexico has cost it an estimated £12.6m to date, Losses excluding swine flu and exceptional costs, due mainly to the restructuring after the MyTravel merger, were down 43 percent, from £87.4m to £49.5m.
http://www.travelchacha.com/
http://www.travelchacha.com/
