Loveholidays increases Atol by 25% to more than 5m passengers

Loveholidays has increased its Atol provision by around a million passengers, or about 25%, meaning it can carry more than five million travellers in 2025.

The increase, which the company said “cements its position as the UK’s largest online travel agent (OTA)”, comes as it reported a record-breaking 2024 performance in which it sold £2.9 billion worth of holidays, while 2025 year started “even stronger”.

The new Atol to carry 5,011,286 passengers, up from 4,014,688 last year, represents a 265% increase on the number of passengers carried in pre-pandemic 2019, when the figure was 1,374,812.

Loveholidays chief executive officer Donat Rétif said: “We are incredibly proud that our proposition is resonating with UK consumers more than ever, helping us to attract both new and repeat customers, and earning us an ‘Excellent’ rating from over 200,000 reviews on Trustpilot.”

The largest Atol holder is Jet2holidays, followed by Tui, then Loveholidays and easyJet holidays.

In the first quarter of its 2025 financial year, which ran between November 2024 and January 2025, Loveholidays sold £814 million worth of holidays, which is an increase of 36% year on year.

One in two (51%) of the company’s bookings now come from repeat customers, with the rollout of “conversational artificial intelligence” cited as a key driver.

The company said it had made “significant investment in customer experience enhancements and technology”.

Product expansion has led to a 57% increase year on year in UK passengers travelling on short-haul city breaks, with the figure reaching 253,400 in the first quarter of the 2025 financial year, while long-haul passengers grew by 43% to 97,100 in the same period.

UK travellers’ top destinations in 2025 so far remain the Canary Islands, mainland Spain and Greek islands, but there has been significant year-on-year growth for Romania (821%), Albania (527%), Thailand (85%) and Tunisia (68%).

Loveholidays launched in the UK market in 2012 before expanding into Ireland in 2016, where it has grown to become the market leader. Last year, the company took the equivalent of 12% of the Irish population on holiday in 2024.

Rétif said: “The flexibility of our business model as an online travel agent – combined with our continued investment in our market-leading technology, product and customer experience – has fuelled our growth and demonstrates the power of Loveholidays in shaping the future of the package holiday market.

“While we have firmly established ourselves as the UK and Ireland’s largest online travel agent, our vision to become Europe’s biggest and most-loved holiday provider remains clear, with further product and market expansion on the horizon.”