Time to make inroads on travel bucket lists

While in lockdown, many people were dreaming of being far, far away, re-working their bucket lists and saving their dollars. Once the borders opened, travel agents were inundated with customers – some of them nervous about covid requirements, but all keen to start ticking off their dream destinations.

Orewa You Travel directors Kiri Martin and Mandy Herd say the first phase of outbound travellers was people wanting to reconnect with family and friends. Then came the desire for some long overdue leisure time in an exotic place – for some, the more exotic the better.

In-demand destinations include Antarctica, the Arctic, Europe and Egypt.

“These are not places that you go for two weeks. People ended up with large amounts of annual leave stacked up after the restrictions, and they are keen to use it on seeing the world.”

Mandy says travel agents are also seeing people prepared to spend more to upgrade their flights, say from Economy to Business Class.

Travel agents are busier than ever.

“There is still a demand/supply issue –we’re not back to pre-covid capacity as yet,”

Kiri says. “That means people have to book earlier than they once did. We’re hoping the prices come down next year, when more airlines start flying to NZ again.”

Upheavals experienced by travellers, such as flight schedule changes and different covid requirements in different places, have caused them to come back to travel agents, rather than booking everything online. “Customers phone us from the airport queues and we can resolve those things for them,” Mandy says. “More travellers understand the value of using an agent now.”

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