On The Beach has said bookings have improved since the Iran war prompted a diversion away from resorts in the Middle East, but that holidaymakers remained cautious and were leaving it later to organise trips.<\/p>\n
The package holiday firm said it was reintroducing its annual profit outlook but at a lower level than analysts had previously expected as a result of the disruption.<\/p>\n
It had suspended forecasts last month following concerns the conflict would impact holiday bookings and warned that it was expecting profits to take a hit.<\/p>\n
The new forecasts show the company generating an adjusted pre-tax profit in the range of \u00a318 million to \u00a325 million.<\/p>\n
This is lower than the \u00a339 million to \u00a343 million range that analysts had previously been expecting.<\/p>\n
The change sent shares in the business tumbling by about 16% on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
On The Beach said that although it does not have much exposure to countries in the Middle East, it experienced a sharp slowdown in demand following the onset of the US-Israel\u2019s war with Iran at the beginning of March.<\/p>\n
This was being exacerbated by a \u201crolling programme of cancellations\u201d to the United Arab Emirates, a surge in customers getting in contact with concerns about trips to regions surrounding the conflict, and a \u201chigher than normal level of flight schedule changes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Demand for holidays remained more \u201csubdued\u201d as a result of the conflict and the knock-on effects to consumer confidence and worries about potential travel disruption over the summer, amid reports about jet fuel shortages threatening flights.<\/p>\n
However, the firm said that booking activity had gone back to more normal levels since the end of March, with the volume of bookings up 9% over the last six weeks ahead of the peak summer months.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, On The Beach said that across the industry, consumers were increasingly booking summer holidays closer to the date of departure in a sign of people stalling when it comes to booking trips or preferring to have more flexibility over their travel plans.<\/p>\n
Victoria Scholar, head of investment for Interactive Investor, said: \u201cShares have plunged by around 15% today reflecting the profit slowdown amid weak demand for holiday destinations like Dubai and Egypt because of tensions in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cConsumers are also booking later, creating uncertainty for the online travel agent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe company will be hoping for a flurry of late bookings and a strong summer trading performance to offset a challenging start to 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On The Beach has said bookings have improved since the Iran war prompted a diversion away from resorts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[37868,34,37869],"class_list":{"0":"post-110137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-holiday-bookings","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-travel-disruption"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116561711180721880","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}