Travel Counsellors generated £933 million in bookings in its latest financial year, boosted by a huge increase in demand for cruises and holidays to Australia.

The sales figure, for the year ending 31 October 2023, is up 23% on 2022’s full-year figure of £758m, and a huge increase on pre-pandemic sales (FY19 – £520m).

More than a million customers were served over 300,000 bookings for the first time.

The top three leisure destinations for UK customers were the US (up 8.8% year-on-year) Spain (up 10.2%), and Greece (up 3.8%).

Cruise bookings were up 66% and trips to Australia were up 167%.

CEO Steve Byrne said:“I am incredibly proud of what we achieved during FY23 and would like to thank everyone associated with our business for their outstanding levels of commitment and care.

“We now work with a growing community of over 2,000 of the market’s most talented independent travel franchisees and I am delighted to say that the average sales growth by established travel counsellors increased by more than (20%) year on year.

“This reflects the power of our technology platform, combined with our supportive community, which helps ambitious travel entrepreneurs to truly fulfil their potential.

“Looking forward, I am extremely confident that we are exceptionally well placed to achieve further significant growth over the coming years. Our current trading remains very strong, and we already have more than £350m of departures booked for FY24, which is up 30% on where we were at the comparable time in FY23.”