Travel with Katie Butler: Jet2holidays becomes the UK's largest tour operator

Katie Butler writes: The Leeds based company celebrated their 20th year anniversary in the same week that the latest ATOL data reported that Jet2 holidays had overtaken rival Tui to become the UK’s largest tour operator.

In February 2003, Jet2.com welcomed its first customers onboard its first ever flight which took off from our very own regional airport of Leeds Bradford (fondly known by those of a certain age as Yeadon Airport).

With just two aircraft serving eight destinations from the local airport it is hard to comprehend the scale of what has been achieved in the last 20 years.

The company now flies to 68 sun, city and ski destinations across the Mediterranean, Canary Islands and Europe, and flies from 10 UK airports. What an achievement!

To mark the impressive occasion, the company hosted a birthday themed celebration at Leeds Bradford Airport.

Customers flying with the airline last Sunday received a VIP customer experience at check-in – including a red carpet welcome, balloon arch, birthday cake and goodie bags.

A band helped get customers into the holiday spirit as they checked-in, and three lucky customers also celebrating their birthdays on the same day received a free pair of return flights.

Sadly, none of our own customers were celebrating their birthdays. However, we look forward to hearing back from our passengers lucky enough to have had this lovely check-in experience.

In addition to birthday celebrations – last week Jet2holidays became the UK’s largest tour operator after increasing its ATOL licence by over half a million passengers for the year.

The increase to almost six million passengers puts Jet2holidays ahead of TUI for the very first time.

Chief executive Steve Heapy thanked independent travel agents for the integral role we have played in its success and growth. And he stressed that taking the number one spot in the UK would never result in lower quality or reduced customer service. Jet2holidays said its increase in ATOL was in response to ‘strong and continued demand.

We enjoyed another busy week last week. Ordinarily we find that we slow down during the school holidays and we can actually grab an off the counter dinner break, but with a staff member down (our assistant manager in Lanzarote) and demand for summer holidays remaining strong we had a much busier half-term week than anticipated. All very well for the summer diet and of course great for business!

Last week our most popular month for new bookings was still May, and top selling destinations were Tenerife and Majorca, so not much change in terms of top selling destinations.

Cruise bookings were strong last week too and accounted for 13 per cent of our total sales.

There are some really great deals available for early summer and even free child places still available for half-term. So, now is a great time to call into your independent travel agent and bag yourself a bargain.