One month in - how's 2007 looking?

January is behind us for another year - thank goodness! New Year resolutions broken, Celebrity Big Brother long-forgotten & the first pay cheque since Christmas swallowed by all the post-Christmas debts.

But the first month of the year is still critical to the travel industry. OK - the days when we had hardly swallowed the last of the Christmas pudding, before picking up the phone to book our summer holiday may have gone. However for many, January is still one of the busiest months of the year for bookings & sets the tone for the months ahead.

So is it going be a Shilpa or a Jade year for you? Did the 2 weeks of bad weather in the UK affect sales? Is credit card debt preventing people booking? What about interest rate rises impacting on consumer's disposable (i.e holiday) spend? Or has Tourism's new TV campaign launched last week brought a boost to your sales?

My own impression is that there has been a bit of a dip in January compared to last year, but not a great one & it is probably to do with a drop in bookings coming from traditional channels - i.e. travel agency bookings via tour operators.

Anyway I thought it might be interesting to get a rough feel for how it's looking. If you are a hotelier, guest house or self-catering operator, travel agent, tour operator, transport operator or anyone else in a position to judge, then please click on one of the options in the survey below and it will give us all a very rough idea of how the early booking period has performed. It's completely anonymous so you won't be giving any trade secrets away!