Brits beat January blues with holiday booking boom

Monday saw record numbers of online holiday bookings as the UK returned back to work after the festive season. As millions of workers returned to work after the Christmas break, internet booking sites were bombarded with enquiries from people keen to beat the post-holiday blues.

Alpharooms.com – one of the UK’s leading providers of discount holiday accommodation – recorded an 84% increase in bookings compared with this time last year.

Gareth Hockey, alpharooms.com’s online marketing manager, said: “January is traditionally a peak booking time for summer holidays, but Monday saw unprecedented levels of enquiries and bookings. It was our busiest day ever for online holiday bookings.

“We’ve seen huge increases in bookings to tropical destinations in particular, such as Malaysia, Mexico and the Caribbean, showing that Brits are keener than ever to guarantee themselves some good weather following the rainy summer we had last year.

“We believe these record bookings are due to people returning to work and logging onto holiday websites to as a way to escape the post–Christmas blues.”

For the beginning of 2008, alpharooms.com has seen a large increase in long haul bookings, as prices fall and far-off countries become more accessible to the British tourist.

Destinations such as Dubai, Penang, Singapore and Cape Town are hotly tipped as this year’s most popular long haul destinations, with existing European favourites such as the Balearic Islands and the Spanish Costas remaining popular for Brits.

Alpharooms.com offers 23,000 hotels and apartments in city break, beach and ski destinations world-wide.

It has a secure, easy-to-use website which is backed up by a UK call centre.

If you’d like some ideas on destinations for your holidays this year, log onto Alpharooms.com.