Last week, Birmingham travel agency Travel Club Elite swept the board at the ATAS (Association of Touring & Adventure Suppliers) national award ceremony, held this year in Leeds.
Travel Club Elite was awarded Agency of the Year Online Call Centre.
Touring & Adventure is a rapidly growing sector of the travel industry & there were some surprising statistics. 26% of travellers are solo & many of these are women, some (of a certain age) calling themselves 'Queenagers'. Not all the solos are single, but often are half of a couple with different holiday interests. Some operators are offering specialist women’s expeditions.
A more sobering aspect of single travel is that there appears to be a loneliness ‘epidemic’ in the UK. James Thornton, of Intrepid, said that an astonishing 37 million Brits identify as lonely ‘some of the time’. 7 in 10 aged 18–24-year-olds identified loneliness, compared to only 50% of those over 65.
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