The England football team’s progress into the quarter finals of the World Cup coupled with the UK heatwave will be seen by many in the travel industry as an unwelcome distraction.
Booking trends for this summer plotted by research firm GfK show a slump in both direct and traditional retail travel agency purchases at the time England has been playing.
Holiday bookings peaked across both channels ahead of the first England match against Tunisia on June 18 but fell back with a steep decline through to the next game against Panama six days later.
The decline, most notably on the high street, also coincided with the start of the current spell of hot weather in the UK.
Bookings then gradually picked up towards to final group stage match against Belgium which England lost to set up last night’s victory on penalties against Colombia.
Gareth Southgate’s team now goes forward to play Sweden in the tournament’s quarter-finals in Russia at 3pm on Saturday afternoon.
GfK senior client insight director David Hope plotted the impact of the warm weather and the England World Cup games on summer 2018 bookings.
Speaking ahead of last night’s win over Columbia, he said: “The start of the hot weather has had an impact on bookings, with both shop and direct showing negative trends.
“The second England match on the Sunday lunch time had the biggest impact, with direct bookings -9% and shop bookings -31% – I’m guessing this is the impact of the World Cup barbeque.
“Will the tour operators be cheering on England tonight as they’ll be playing on Saturday at 3pm if they win and this could have a similar impact on bookings for that day as the weather also continues to hold, or just pray for rain?”
However, he provided one crumb of comfort, adding: “Typically we see bookings pick up after England get knocked out, so they tend to be more delayed than lost.”
But Teletext Holidays, meanwhile, contradicted the findings by reporting a record June.
Telephone enquiries were up by a fifth year-on-year and with a 15% rise in bookings, helped by increased interest in eastern Mediterranean destinations and long-haul.
Managing director Wayne Perks said: “Like most travel businesses, we would expect June to be pretty quiet – especially with events like the World Cup, or the hot weather, distracting people from browsing for or booking holidays.
“This year has been completely different. The ‘feel good June’ means our phones have been hotter than Harry Kane’s scoring streak, and there are plenty of deals still to be snapped up in our sale.”