Speaking at the Hays Independence Group Conference onboard Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas, managing director John Hays reported that both arms of the Hays business had achieved growth despite "pricing pressures" placed on consumers.
He told delegates that during the four months since Britain voted to leave the European Union on June 23, Hays Travel retail stores and Hays IG members had seen a "strong trend" towards all-inclusive bookings following a slump in the value of sterling.
"Clearly our clients’ spending power has been reduced; however we have seen a strong trend in growth towards all-inclusive bookings,” Hays said. "Clients want to secure the price of their holiday and get the most out of the devaluation of the pound.”
Discussing Brexit, Hays said it felt to him as if a number of prominent politicians who had championed Brexit “didn’t have a plan” for how the policy should be carried out once the Leave campaign and been successful.
“When it actually happened they didn’t seem to have that much of an idea of what it would actually look like in practice,” he continued. “Everything’s up in the air at the moment and we don’t know if it will be a soft Brexit or a hard Brexit. Everything could turn out to be fine so at the moment we can only focus on our business and keep doing what we are doing.”
Hays said the group’s retail business and IG members had coped well during “challenging times” with Hays IG members seeing a like-for-like cumulative profits rise of 13% for the year to the end of September.
The figures did not include IG members who had been trading under the group for less than one year.
The group also welcomed a number of new members to its ranks including Pennine Travel, Just Cruise, Masters World Travel and Dewhirst Travel.
Commercial manager Claire Gibson said the group’s growth, both financially and in its member numbers, would help it build towards 2017 being its “most successful year to date”.
