January is the one of the busiest months for Cornwall holiday cottage bookings, reports Duchy Holidays.
Cornwall based cottage holiday company Duchy Holidays is preparing for a rush of bookings in the traditional January booking period which starts on Boxing Day.
Over the last few years the company has been inundated with enquiries about its self catering holiday cottages and apartments near the North Cornwall coast during the January rush.
This year Duchy Holidays is carefully planning staff levels and opening hours to capitalise on the growing number of people who rush to book their summer holidays as soon as Christmas is over.
“Last year was a particularly busy season for us, which started in early January with a run of solid bookings,” said Chelsea Johnson, marketing manager at Duchy Holidays. “We’ve already booked up many properties for key holiday periods in 2017 so we’re expecting a bit of a mad scramble to snap up the remaining weeks at the most popular properties straight after Christmas.”
Duchy Holidays represents privately owned properties in and around Perranporth, St Agnes and Porthtowan, including small one-bedroom apartments, timber eco lodges and large, modern, family holiday homes. Many of the company’s properties are close to the beach or coast, so are exceedingly popular for summer holidays and school breaks.
For the 2016 season over 12% of the year’s bookings were taken in January, which was the third best month after July and August. The busiest week was between the 3rd and 9th of January, when the company booked 233 weeks at its holiday properties.
The company expects this demand to be even higher in 2017 thanks to its increased marketing effort and the continued growth in popularity of Cornwall as a holiday destination.
Chelsea Johnson commented: “The combined effects of a post-Brexit weak pound, the popularity of staycations and the TV show Poldark beaming the beauty of Cornwall in to people’s living rooms each week should bring in a bumper load of bookings in January. We’re looking forward to welcoming even more visitors to Cornwall in 2017.”
To handle the influx of enquiries and bookings, the Duchy Holidays office will be open for half a day on Bank Holiday Monday and resume normal opening hours on Tuesday 4th January. Phone lines will be open until 9pm throughout January.
“It will be an exciting few weeks,” added Chelsea Johnson. “We don’t expect to have much time to tuck into the leftover Quality Streets!”
