'Bucket list' boom as people eye foreign travel options again

Recovery underway after devastating 16 months for travel industry

With the vaccine roll out and the EU digital travel pass coming onstream next month, people are beginning to book holidays again according to Martin Skelly of Navan Travel.

“It has been a very tough 16 months but we are beginning to see signs of recovery.

“People are contacting us to plan holidays for autumn this year or next year.

“A lot of people want to book holidays or weekends away around St Valentine’s Day, St Patrick's Day and Easter and from then on,” he said.

“People are also looking to book holidays later this year, but we have had people looking to book breaks from as early as 19th July when the new European Digital passport comes onstream.”

While a lot of people are looking for family holidays, Martin is seeing a lot of local customers booking “bucket list” type destinations.

“People who would have said 'I must to that sometime', now seem to be saying, I will do it now.

“People are enquiring about safaris in South Africa, a trip to the Galapagos, a weekend in Iceland, walking the Camino.

“It seems people have really enjoyed the outdoorsy healthy lifestyles they have had during the pandemic and are booking more active holidays with walking particularly popular.

“We have holidays with walks in Spain and Portugal and there is also a great interest in camping and mobile home holidays in places like the Italian lakes, the east coast of Spain, and from Britanny right down the South of France.

“People are also booking trips to see Santa at Christmas and a lot of grandparents are booking those trips.

Despite cruises being in the headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past year, people are now booking Mediterranean and Caribbean cruises, most of them for next year, but some for next autumn.

It has been a difficult sixteen months for travel agents, as they were effectively prevented from trading due to Covid-19, and yet remained open to assist customers with refunds and rescheduling bookings. Martin said his team at Navan Travel has been amazing throughout the pandemic.

“They were brilliant – even at the beginning when customers were very stressed about holidays that had to be cancelled. They processed thousands and thousands of refunds and rebooked so many holidays from last year to this year and from this year to next year,” he said.

Martin was re-elected to the Irish Travel Agents Association Board at the Association’s AGM, which took place virtually today via video conference last week.