OTA loveholidays projects growth of over a million passengers from the UK in 2024

It hopes it'll help it'll become Europe’s number one holiday provider

New ATOL data published by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) reveals European OTA loveholidays has increased its 2024 licence by more than a million passengers versus 2023.

The OTA is licensed to carry four million (4,014,688) passengers from the UK this year, up 39% on 2023 (2,887,766) and 191% on 2019 (1,374,812), demonstrating significant growth post-pandemic.

Its enhancements to the user experience, including investing in artificial intelligence to streamline the process of managing a holiday post-booking, has seemed to help it to attract new customers and grow retention, with repeat custom increasing by 87% year-on-year in 2023.

The CAA figures only represent loveholidays’ UK business, with its operations in Ireland and Germany continuing to contribute to its overall growth and performance.

The company became the world’s first Ryanair-verified package holiday provider earlier this year, giving customers access to the airline’s low-cost fares and has successfully launched in Germany as weloveholidays in mid-2023.

It is now looking at further international expansion to support its ambition of becoming Europe’s number one holiday provider.

Donat Rétif, CEO of loveholidays, said: “Two major events have reshaped our industry over the past few years.

"The pandemic prompted people to re-evaluate what they want from a holiday, while the cost-of-living crisis underlined the importance of getting value for money. 

"At the heart of our proposition is a commitment to offering an unrivalled choice of holidays at the best prices, and the demand we are seeing shows that this continues to resonate with consumers.

“Thanks to the support of our suppliers and our fantastic team, in the last year we have successfully expanded into our third source market, added thousands of new holidays to our platform, been recognised as one of the UK’s best places to work and, most importantly, helped millions of people to go on well-deserved holidays.

He added: "Our vision remains to become Europe’s number one holiday provider, and we know that continued investment in our people, platform and the experience we offer our customers will be central to us achieving that aim.”