Email marketing proves "very efficient" for SMEs

The growth of the online tourism industry has meant an increase in the variety of holidays being offered to Brits, according to the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA).

Francis Tuke, ABTA spokesperson, said the industry was becoming more activity and adventure holiday driven.

She commented: "Essentially, what we’ve seen is quite a lot of our members repositioning their businesses.

People have specialised in certain destinations and also many of them have gone up-market as well. There is a real boom at the moment for luxury travel. So we’ve done extremely well with the concierge style-service, or the face-to-face expertise you can get on the high street.

"As a nation we’re very confident travellers and we’ve travelled a lot. We’re very confident about going to destinations that we’ve visited before by booking the component parts [separately]."

Figures from the European Travel Commission show that 31 per cent of British adults plan to conduct all of their holiday planning online in 2008.