Saga has confirmed significant growth in trade sales through the first half of the year, across both its Holidays and Cruise businesses.
The operator began selling via the trade four years ago, with trade sales forming 11% of its Holidays business and 7% of Cruise in 2017. Earlier this year, structural changes brought a renewed focus to travel agent partnerships to which the company attributes a substantial year-on-year trade sales growth in excess of 30% on their Holidays business and 80% on Cruise. This is in tandem with a significant demand for long-haul touring products and for Cruise, by the first of two new build boutique cruise ships, Spirit of Discovery.
Iain Powell, head of trade sales, said: ?I?m incredibly excited by the results we are seeing through the trade. We?ve spoken at length around the importance of travel agents in growing our business and the support we?ve received has been quite overwhelming. We will continue to invest in this channel and have lots of exciting developments planned in the remainder of 2018 and into next year?.
Joe Sutcliffe, head of long haul product, added: ?We?ve released lots of new and exciting products in the last few months, many of which form part of our new brochure, so I?m not surprised there is significant customer interest. Travel agents are experts at matching customers to the right holiday and so far they?ve done an incredible job for us at Saga.?
