{"id":2503,"date":"2015-01-09T17:18:01","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T17:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/?p=2503"},"modified":"2015-01-09T17:18:01","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T17:18:01","slug":"sunshine-saturday-10th-january-predicted-to-be-busiest-day-of-year-for-holiday-bookings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/sunshine-saturday-10th-january-predicted-to-be-busiest-day-of-year-for-holiday-bookings\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunshine Saturday \u2013 10th January predicted to be busiest day of year for holiday bookings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>10th\u00a0January is predicted to be the busiest day of the year for holiday bookings according to leading holiday providers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomson.co.uk\/\">Thomson<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firstchoice.co.uk\/\">First Choice<\/a>.\u00a0 Based on booking patterns over the last five years and with great deals available including 20,000 free kids places, the holiday giants are expecting over one million people to go online or visit their high street stores on what is being termed Sunshine Saturday.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/shutterstock_130981235.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2504\" title=\"shutterstock_130981235\" src=\"\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/shutterstock_130981235.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/shutterstock_130981235.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/shutterstock_130981235-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/shutterstock_130981235-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Over one million people expected to visit a Thomson or First Choice shop or website this Saturday<\/li>\n<li>37,000 customers expected to book in 24 hours<\/li>\n<li>Mobile and tablet bookings expected to hit all time high with 40% of bookings made on devices<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As the post-Christmas blues kick in and Brits look to escape the weather for warmer climes, Thomson and First Choice are expecting to see 37,000 customers book to go on holiday in 2015.\u00a0 Bookings are predicted to peak in-store at 2.30pm and online at 8.30pm.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, Thomson and First Choice are expecting more people than ever before to search for and book their holiday on a tablet or smartphone.\u00a0 Over 40% of the online bookings made this Saturday are expected to be made via these devices, up 10% versus last year.<\/p>\n<p>With the introduction of the new MyThomson and MyFirstChoice apps with search and book function, Thomson and First Choice are predicting a new mobile booking record for 2015, beating last year\u2019s single purchase of nearly \u00a314,000 for a family holiday to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/orlando\/\">Orlando<\/a> via a mobile device.<\/p>\n<p>The most popular short\/mid haul destinations for the coming year are anticipated to be the Balearics, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/country\/canary-islands\/\">Canaries<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/country\/greece\/\">Greece<\/a>, whilst for those looking for some faraway sun <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/country\/costa_rica\/\">Costa Rica<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/mauritius\/\">Mauritius<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/country\/mexico\/\">Mexico<\/a> are set to top the list.<\/p>\n<p>Thomson Cruises\u2019 Cuban Fusion and Pride of Panama winter itineraries on-board the Thomson Dream are expected to be Sunshine Saturday bestsellers as Brits look to explore countries like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/country\/cuba\/\">Cuba<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/continent\/americas\/\">Central America<\/a> from the ship\u2019s new home port in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/montego_bay\/\">Montego Bay<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/country\/jamaica\/\">Jamaica<\/a>.\u00a0With Thomson Celebration also based in Caribbean for winter, replacing the Dream in its previous port in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/country\/barbados\/\">Barbados<\/a>, Thomson Cruises also expects to see strong demand for the already popular itineraries sailing to Caribbean favourites such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/antigua\/\">Antigua<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/st_kitts\/\">St Kitts<\/a> and St Maarten. Sailings from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/dubrovnik\/\">Dubrovnik <\/a>on-board the Thomson Celebration in the summer are also expected to be a hit with adult only itineraries available.<\/p>\n<p>Taking all these holidaymakers away over the coming year, <a href=\"http:\/\/flights.thomson.co.uk\/en\/index.html\">Thomson Airways <\/a>will carry over 78,000 tonnes of luggage, flying over two million miles to 73 holiday destinations.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Flintham, Commercial Director, for Thomson and First Choice said: \u2018With Christmas now out of the way many people feel they need a holiday in the sunshine to look forward to. Over the last few years we\u2019ve noticed that our customers are booking holidays earlier and with searches over Christmas hitting an all-time high, we\u2019re expecting the rush to continue with our busiest day of year this Saturday. It\u2019s also the perfect time for Brits to take advantage of some of the great new year deals available to places like Croatia and Greece or further afield to Costa Rica, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/country\/thailand\/\">Thailand<\/a> and Jamaica.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Thomson<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>10th\u00a0January is predicted to be the busiest day of the year for holiday bookings according to leading holiday providers Thomson and First Choice.\u00a0 Based on booking patterns over the last five years and with great deals available including 20,000 free kids places, the holiday giants are expecting over one million people to go online or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"post_views_count":3118,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[360,451,470,473,384,472,162,318,313,474,112,476,317,475,471],"class_list":["post-2503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holidays","tag-resort-antigua","tag-resort-barbados","tag-resort-canaries","tag-resort-centralamerica","tag-resort-costarica","tag-resort-cuba","tag-resort-dubrovnik","tag-resort-greece","tag-resort-mexico","tag-resort-montegobay","tag-resort-orlando","tag-resort-stkitts","tag-resort-thailand","tag-resortjamaica","tag-resortmauritius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2503"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2510,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503\/revisions\/2510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holiday-weather.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}