Narrowboat holidays booming

Canal-based holidays are reaching record levels this year as Brits scale down their foreign holiday plans. Good news for the industry, but will operators make the most of it? Holly Barder reports

Record bookings were taken during the first week of 2009 at UK Boat Hire. The company, part of ABC Leisure Group, enjoyed its best day of trading in almost 15 years on New Year’s Day.

At a time when most industries are reporting losses, canalboat holiday sales are booming.

Haley Shurmer, ABC’s marketing and sales manager, says: “More people are looking to holiday in this country because of the financial situation and the state of the euro.

“January’s been very good. We’ve had a lot of bookings already, and nearly three- quarters of our customers are new.”

Blue Water Holidays also announced unparalleled sales for the third week in January. Marketing manager Juliet Peters says: “We’ve been trading for 13 years and it was our best week to date. We were up five per cent on last year.

Nigel Richards, director of Waterways Holidays, sums it up when he says: “Sales are buoyant at the moment. If you’re in the euro zone, we now represent a cheap holiday.”

In a usually stable market, this increase in sales is unprecedented. Blue Water Holidays is attempting to make the most of it with early booking offers.

“The trend is to hold off and book as late as possible. Our message is to book now to get the best deals,” Peters says.

But it’s not just the economy that’s boosting canal holidays. Hoseasons’ product director, Sara Zimmerman, says the market is shifting and canal-based companies are adapting well.

“Narrowboat operators hate the comparison, but the design of static caravans and self-catered accommodation has come on leaps and bounds.

“Boating holidays have to keep up. The expectation from customers is there, and operators have looked at that and responded. They’ve said: ‘Let’s not just meet it. Let’s exceed it.’”

Other operators have decided to adopt a ‘wait and see’ policy. Adam Foskett, manager of Middlewich Narrowboats, says advance bookings are up 20 per cent on this time last year. But the company is not planning to alter its approach.

“We’re not looking to exploit the situation. We generate enough bookings with the marketing that we do, so we’ll probably just stay as we are,” Foskett says.

“We don’t want to look at building a new boat until we can be more certain about the rest of the season,” he says.

Zimmerman says this is a practical approach, rather than a failure to plan for the future. “A canalboat is a huge investment. Operators can’t just double their fleet because of demand. They have to take a longer view.

Travel agents failing boat holiday companies

By Holly Barder

Narrowboat holiday operators could increase business if travel agents had more confidence to sell their packages, according to a major self-catering holiday company.

Hoseasons has started taking its sales staff out on boats in the hope they will be more inclined to promote this type of holiday.

The company’s head of sales, Zena Calderbank, said: “If travel agents don’t know enough about a specific market, they tend to shy away from it.”

“We are training them to be able to say that a canal-boat holiday is a great way to spend a weekend. It’s in the UK and it’s different.”

Sales of canal-boat holidays are booming in the economic downturn and Hoseasons hopes to take advantage of that.