Travel with Katie Butler: Something for everyone on-board MSC Cruise ship Virtuosa!

Katie Butler writes: Our assistant manager Leanne is now back from conference where she was lucky enough to be hosted on-board MSC Cruise ship Virtuosa. Leanne sampled the dining and entertainment options on the ship along with meeting many of our suppliers and bringing back a wealth of knowledge to feed back to our teams, who in turn are able to feed back to you – are wonderful customers.

Virtuosa is huge, with a wealth of facilities to suit everyone but is especially suited to families, with facilities including an interactive splash park, bowling alley, Galleria Virtuosa (a 100 metre long indoor promenade filled with shops and restaurants), swimming pools, water slides, Formula One simulator and Le Grand Theatre to name just a selection. All this on top of the fabulous kids club available on-board.

Last week we were delighted to see a positive update from His Majesty’s Passport Office. The disruption to international travel caused by Covid-19 affected passport services across the world and in the UK we experienced severe delays to passport applications and renewals with some applications taking over 12 weeks to process.

The HM Passport Office last week updated its main website stating: “You’ll usually get your passport within three weeks from when we receive your documents. It may take longer than three weeks if we need more information, or we need to interview you. We’ll tell you this within three weeks.”

I sent off my own renewal on September 29 so I will keep you posted as to when I get it back. I travel on the Jet2 VIP Agent Conference to Turkey in November so very much hope that the new time scales are correct.

The new ATOL (Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing) standings were also revealed last week by the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) with Jet2holidays putting even more distance between itself and its closest competitor Tui and remains the largest UK ATOL holder.

Tui UK and Easyjet holidays also increased their ATOL and it certainly appears, based on the latest increases that demand for travel remains strong.

Michael Budge, the UK CAA’s head of ATOL, said: "Our license holders seem to be confident that bookings will remain buoyant into 2024.”

We are seeing high demand for summer 2024 bookings and coming soon to book is summer 2025. Yes, believe it or not, some of our customers are that organised.

October remained our top selling month last week with a huge 16 per cent share of our total bookings, with late bookings (travelling within the next 12 weeks) continuing to dominate taking a whopping 32 per cent of our total bookings. The change in the weather is encouraging many of you to grab some last minute sunshine.

No surprise then to see that Tenerife and Lanzarote were the top selling destinations, as of course, at this time of year you have a better chance of seeing sunshine and warmer temperatures in these locations. Turkey remained top destination for Summer 2024.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​