SPL Villas to expand trade sales team after securing Atol

SPL Villas is targeting “significant growth” in 2024 as it has secured Atol certification and plans to expand its trade sales team.

The Kent-based villa specialist – founded in 2017 by Sandra and Peter Linnell – has also unveiled a refreshed brand identity and website.

Travel agents, and consumers who want to book direct, will now be able to package flights from more than a dozen airlines with one of SPL’s 1,500 properties thanks to the Atol.

Its portfolio of properties features more than 100 destinations, across its Adriatic heartland, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, Turkey and Florida.

More than a third of bookings are taken via travel agents, and the company is a member of several consortia and agency groups including Advantage Travel Partnership, Barrhead Travel and Protected Trust Services.

It plans to expand those partnership and work more closely with the trade in 2024.

A third member of its trade sales team will be recruited early in the new year, who will be focused on the southern UK. The current trade partnership managers are Anne Clays and Sarah Gill.

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Edward Frampton-Fell, managing director of SPL Villas, said: “Travel agents have always been an important element of our strategy.

“After a period of change in the villa sector, securing Atol certification is a big step for us to take in ensuring we’re their first choice when it comes to booking villas for their clients.

“We’re very excited to head into 2024 offering them an unbeatable range of properties and locations and the security of our Atol and Abtot [Association of Bonded Travel Organisers Trust] membership, plus value for money for their clients and a generous commission structure for them, to ensure that’s the case.”

Agents and consumers will be able to make villa-only bookings online right away, with package booking enquiries directed to the SPL Villa contact centre.

Full online package booking functionality will be available later this month.

Frampton-Fell added: “Our new identity, which extends across our website and all our direct and trade-facing marketing, is grounded in our vision to be the UK’s leading villa holidays company for families and groups.

“We’ve refreshed our colour palette to give us a much more contemporary feel, and the greater emphasis we’re giving to people and product-focused imagery and video both highlight what makes a villa holiday different, and give us a much stronger digital footprint.”

SPL said its 2030 revenue was up 130% year on year with bookings up by 90%.

Its core destinations of Cyprus, the Algarve and Majorca remain its most popular, but the company has seen fastest growth in bookings to Florida, which it will be looking to accelerate further in 2024.

Frampton-Fell said: “We’re seeing a lot of positive indicators that 2024 could be our best year ever – with advanced bookings for the summer already 60% ahead of where they were 12 months ago, and enquiry levels in January up 140% on last year.

“But the nature of villa holidays, which can see large mixed family or friendship groups travelling together, can mean people get booking anxiety.

“The capability to offer our travel agent and direct customers protection and assurance via our Atol licence couldn’t come at a better time for us, and we’ll be working to maximise that opportunity with our agent partners during the forthcoming peaks period.”

Pictured: Villa Suncanica, Croatia