January is typically the busiest time of year for people making holiday bookings.
The anticipation of Christmas and a New Year has gone, and January blues may have settled in.
According to one of the world's leading tourism groups, TUI, Sunshine Saturdays are the most popular booking days of the year - which this year fell on Saturday January 6.
Many travel companies offer promotions in January to kick-start the year - including discounted fares, package deals and offers - and travellers looking to escape the cold winter months of England are often keen to book.
We asked people in Manchester why they think travel businesses get so much traffic around this time of year and if they have booked any holidays for 2024.
The anticipation of Christmas and a New Year has gone, and January blues may have settled in.
According to one of the world's leading tourism groups, TUI, Sunshine Saturdays are the most popular booking days of the year - which this year fell on Saturday January 6.
Many travel companies offer promotions in January to kick-start the year - including discounted fares, package deals and offers - and travellers looking to escape the cold winter months of England are often keen to book.
We asked people in Manchester why they think travel businesses get so much traffic around this time of year and if they have booked any holidays for 2024.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 January is typically the busiest time of year for people making holiday bookings.
00:05 The anticipation of Christmas and a new year has gone and January blues may have settled in.
00:11 According to one of the world's leading tourism groups TUI,
00:15 Sunshine Saturdays are the most popular booking days of the year,
00:18 which this year fell on Saturday the 6th of January.
00:22 Many travel companies offer promotions in January to kick start the year,
00:26 including discounted fares, package deals and offers.
00:30 And travellers looking to escape the cold winter months of England are often keen to book.
00:35 We asked people in Manchester why they think travel businesses get so much traffic around this time of year
00:41 and if they've booked any holidays for 2024.
00:44 Because it's cold and you need a pick me up, we've just booked two, so yeah, that's what you need.
00:52 Excellent, so I was just going to ask, where are you going then?
00:55 Well, we've never been to Bulgaria before, so we've booked Bulgaria, I think it's the end of April,
01:01 and then Dominican Republic later on in the year.
01:05 Well, I think because it's a bit of a lull time, isn't it?
01:07 There's a lot of build up to Christmas, especially in some of the shops that starts in September.
01:11 So then I think, you know, there's all the hubbub about Christmas and then it's all over
01:14 and then it's a bit of a kind of like low period and you think, well, I'll just book a holiday.
01:18 Not for me though, because I'm trying not to fly.
01:22 So I'm going to go to Centre Park in April and then Harrogate to go to the Harrogate Baths on the train.
01:30 I've booked three holidays for this year already and it's just something to look forward to.
01:36 You know, if you haven't had a great year last year, you always want to make it better.
01:39 So I'm going to New York in February, Gran Canaria in May and Thailand in November, December.
01:46 We also spoke to Manchester Airport to find out this year's popular destinations and some of the new routes for 2024.
01:54 We stay here at Manchester. The earlier you book, the better deals that you get here in terms of your lounges and your car parking.
02:02 Coming out of December, we had our busiest December ever.
02:06 So we had about two million passengers through the airport.
02:08 So you get a bit of a mix of weekend breaks and then longer, you know, further afield stuff.
02:15 So your weekend breaks, we saw the likes of Dublin and Amsterdam coming through.
02:19 Your further away stuff was the likes of Dubai, Tenerife.
02:23 Now what we're starting to see is, as you say, you know, the cold weather is here and people are starting to think about getting away at this time of year or even into summer.
02:32 So as we kind of head more towards summer, you'll see the likes of Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey is a really popular destination for us.
02:41 And then we've got a couple of new routes as well this year for the summer, which is really exciting for us.
02:46 So we're the only English airport outside of the southern airports to offer a direct route to the west coast of the US.
02:54 So we've got a new route to Las Vegas on from June.
02:59 We are also offering a new route to Luxembourg as well.
03:02 And then we've also got a route to Jordan this year as well.
03:06 So, you know, a real myriad of things that are available and yeah, really exciting time.