After Thomas Cook last year conceded its position as the UK’s second largest tour operator, the CAA’s latest Atol renewal figures give the industry pause for thought ahead of the summer peak season.
The longstanding Tui-Cook duopoly was finally broken by Jet2holidays in September last year, with Cook relinquishing its more than 10-year grip on the second spot.
But while Jet2holidays made huge leaps to cement its place, Cook cut its own authorisations. Tui meanwhile, licensed to carry almost double that of its nearest rival, extended its licence by around 1%. All three operators renewed their Atols in September.
Attention will now turn to September 2018 when battle lines will be drawn and the “big three” make their next moves, albeit with a busy summer season to come first.
It is an intriguing set up after Jet2holidays upset the apple cart, although it remains to be seen whether the company’s bold expansion will continue at such a pace.
Just this week though, Jet2.com and Jet2holidays announced plans to further boost capacity, adding thousands of seats at Birmingham, East Midlands, Newcastle, Stansted, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports (see p18).
Cook, meanwhile, has retreated over the past three years, cutting its licensed passenger numbers 23% from 3.9 million to 3 million in September 2015 after withdrawing from Egypt and Tunisia. Its Atol authorisations fell a further 18% to 2.45 million the following year and another 2.5% to 2.39 million in the 12 months to October 2017.
Jet2holidays, though, has made a bold stand. Its licensed passenger number rocketed 45% from 1.58 million to 2.27 million in the 12 months to October 2017.
It is now licensed to sell 2.94 million Atol-protected holidays through to October 2018 – up 29% compared with October 2017.
Looking at year-on-year fluctuations from March 2017 to March 2018, Expedia (1.42 million, -0.4%) and On the Beach (1,302,261, +8%) – which renewed last month – maintain fourth and fifth spot respectively.
Loveholidays.com also renewed in March (804,618, +27.5%), overtaking British Airways Holidays (786,000, -12%) and climbing from eighth to sixth after more than doubling its capacity in just two years.
British Airways Holidays slips to seventh following the collapse of First Aviation (Monarch), which last April was granted a licence for 884,954 Atol-protected holidays.
Travel Republic (610,269, -1.6%) therefore moves into eighth position and Virgin Holidays (388,249, +5.1%) into ninth while BravoNext SA (384,737, +13.3%), trading as Lastminute.com, has leapfrogged Southall Travel (364,500, +1.5%), denying the firm – 11th last year – 10th place in the list.
Virgin Holidays – which renewed in March – continues to rise despite its controversial 2015 move to direct-sell only, while Loveholidays.com’s ascendancy continues. In April 2016, it leapt from 23rd to ninth in the list, with a licence for 400,000 passengers. Last year, it added a further 231,000, taking it to eighth and now sixth, and is now licensed to carry more than 800,000 passengers.
The Global Travel Group also made gains, extending its licence 33.7% from 197,741 passengers to 256,198.
Olympic Holidays (-12%) and easyJet Holidays (-15%), which both renewed their licences in March, as well as British Airways Holidays (-12%) and Gold Medal Travel (-23.8%), all scaled back their Atols within the last year.
