Hello and welcome to the Independence Daily Travel Podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Friday the 14th of

March, which means that, well, a month from now, an awful lot of people will be on holiday because of the

late Easter, Easter Sunday, not actually happening until the 20th of April. And I'm intrigued to

discover whether April is actually the new

August in terms of the sheer demand for families to go on their main holidays in April rather

than in August at the normal summer peak and there's only one person to talk to that's

Julia Lopouay-Said,

Chief Executive of Advantage Travel Partnership. Hello, Julia. Hi, Simon. So tell me what are

your member travel agents telling you about how the Easter holiday sales are going?

I think there are a number of things that play that are

seen right across the UK. And a lot of this is really because of the late Easter we have.

So we have very late Easter this year compared to last year. And that does a couple of things.

Obviously, one that changes the booking patterns. It changes the mindset of actually where

to travel. And also there are things like, well,

if I'm traveling to Europe now, the weather's going to be a lot nicer. So actually, possibly,

I can take my main holiday in Easter as opposed to August. And we are absolutely seeing that

happen. The volume of sales that are coming through for Easter holidays, full families,

is in a much greater share than

we would typically see at this time of year also compared to the summer.

But traditionally, as you will know, the travel industry doesn't really start with its

summer season with the large number of charter flights and hotel rooms booked until actually the start of May. So have they

kind of brought that forward? Are there enough plane seats? There is still a lot of capacity.

...