Holiday firms and airlines have reported a surge in bookings since the plan for easing lockdown was unveiled.

Despite questions over the return of international travel, the UK’s biggest holiday firm, Tui, said bookings for foreign trips jumped 500% overnight. The owner of UK-based holiday firms Hoseasons and Cottages.com said it sold a record 10,000 breaks.

The government said a decision on easing international travel would not happen until mid-May at the earliest. But Tui said its bookings for July-onwards had soared with Greece, Spain and Turkey the most popular destinations.  Amid uncertainty over when foreign travel will be allowed, some holidaymakers have their sights set on a UK break.

Simon Altham, group chief commercial officer at Awaze, the company behind Hoseasons, said: “Last year following similar announcements we saw bookings peak at one every 11 seconds, but this time demand has exceeded our expectations and comfortably broken that record.”

Nat Sommers told the BBC she had booked a family trip to Yorkshire after Boris had announced his plans to ease lockdown.  “We’d been keeping our eye on a few places over the last few weeks in anticipation of lockdown being eased,” she said.  “We just decided to go for it an book it in the hope that things would be back to relative normality come August.”

Boris Johnson has said a global travel taskforce would put forward a report by 12 April on how to return to international travel.  The government would then make a decision on removing restrictions on international travel, but not before 17 May at the earliest.

As the government has said dates could move for the start of international travel, Tui has said that anyone due to travel between 17 May and the end of June can change their booking to a later date without a fee.

Andrew Flintham, managing director for Tui UK and Ireland, described the government’s steps as “positive”.  Thomas Cook said traffic to its website was up over 100% on Monday from 15:00 GMT onwards, with bookings “flooding in” for countries such as Greece, Cyprus, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

“The government’s announcement today is good news for those of us desperate to get away on holiday,” said Thomas Cook’s chief executive Alan French.  “While we await more details, it’s clear that the government’s ambition is to open up international travel in the coming months and hopefully in time for the summer holidays.”

There was a big leap in family bookings for the summer holidays, especially for August, as well as people booking for the October half term and Christmas, a Thomas Cook spokesman said.

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