Speaking at the Hays Travel Independence Group annual conference in Marbella, Katrina Latimer, trade partnership manager at Cook, said that the rising costs of Spanish holidays in 2017 had in part led to a Turkey “resurgence”, which began mid-summer.
“It actually became our number one selling destination in the lates period,” she said. “And that’s what it’s going to look like moving forward into summer 2018 as well.”
“Pretty much every UK departure airport has Turkey capacity for 2018 – we have a huge Antalya programme. For Turkey we are nearly back at 2015 capacity levels.”
Regarding Tunisia, Latimer said Cook was keen to support the community and help rebuild tourism. We want to endorse what has clearly been labelled a safe destination.
“We’ve had a very sensitive approach to this,” she said, adding: “To date the success has come from previous Tunisia customers.”
She said the programme is based mainly around Hammamet and added that the quality of product offered by Cook in the destination was “higher quality” than in previous programmes.
The programme includes three Sentido resorts and one Aquamania.
There will be four flights out of the UK to Tunisia this winter, starting in February. In summer 2018 there will be 12 flights and new airports have been added: Stansted, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle and Luton.
Elsewhere, Latimer said Cook’s new Egypt programme to Marsa Alam was “flying” and Hurghada had been very successful this summer.
