Bedwithease has announced that it is set for its ‘best ever trading year’ in its 15-year history, with annual growth predicted at +25% compared with last year. 

At a VIP agent summer event for over 30 key partners, Paul Riches, sales director, Bedswithease said: “Whilst we still have the peak selling season ahead of us, we are confident that in 2016/17 we will return our best ever results, both in passenger numbers and profitability. This will be an excellent performance against some of the toughest trying conditions the industry has seen for many years.

“We are on target to carry over 200,000 passengers this year, with over 60% now staying in our own directly contracted hotels. We predict this figure to grow to 75-80% over the next few years, as we continue to expand our number of direct contacts and overseas buyers.”

The Greek Islands, Portugal and mainland Spain have seen the biggest year-on-year % increases so far. Turkey has also ‘bounced back’ after a difficult couple of years. ‘Emerging markets such as Croatia, Bulgaria, USA, Mexico and the UAE have all seen substantial increases vs the same period last year.

The company has also recently announced plans to expand its current team of five European destination managers who are expected to double over the next two years. This will see the number of directly contracted hotels increase from 2500 to over 5000 by 2019.

“We are on target with our three-year plan to expand both our product range and our distribution network in UK, Ireland and across Europe. We have concluded some important new distribution deals over the last few months and we should be announcing new strategic partnerships, which will increase our distribution into other key European markets.

“We will be looking to improve our trade support over the forthcoming months, as we make technical enhancements on our XML feed and launch a ‘new look’ agent website, following extensive feedback from our trade partners.” added Riches.