Speaking to the media following the company’s Q1 trading update, Peter Fankhauser, group chief executive, said Turkey was the “standout destination” in for all markets.
He said Turkey now ranked about joint second with Greece in terms of popularity.
He said: “Spain is still the biggest destination but demand is going back more to normal levels, from about 40% to about 33%. Within Spain the Canaries and then the Balearics are the most popular.”
Meanwhile for the UK tour operation, which tends to have an earlier booking pattern compared to other markets, bookings are up by 3%, while average selling prices are up by 6% for summer 2018, which Fankhauser put down to “higher input costs”.
“The main reason it’s increased so considerably is we have higher input costs and in some places like Spain higher bed costs as well,” he said.
Thomas Cook said in its trading update: "We continue to see significant margin pressure in holidays to Spain, our largest destination, due to higher hotel cost inflation and increased flight capacity.
"We continue to take actions to help mitigate this, by rebalancing our programme towards higher margin destinations such as Turkey and Egypt, generating efficiencies, and repositioning the business through greater online distribution and an intense focus on sales of holidays to own-brand hotels."
