UK Travel sector faces ‘uphill battle’ to regain pre-Covid consumer confidence

Customer satisfaction levels across the travel sector have fallen to the lowest level in more than a decade as companies struggled to confront the Covid-19 crisis.

New data shows that it saw the greatest drop across all industries, falling by 1.8 points year-on-year to 77.7 - the lowest score since 2009 - as the tourism industry battled to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.

Overall customer satisfaction dropped to its lowest level since July 2015, according to Institute of Customer Service research.

A total of 14.4% of customers in the tourism sector reported experiencing a problem, 4.9 percentage points higher than in January 2020.

The industry came under scrutiny throughout the year over its handling of holiday cancellations and refunds.

Therefore, it is "unsurprising" that the latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) also found the proportion of problems surrounding an organisation not keeping its promises and commitments had risen by 4 percentage points, to 18.1%.

Tui suffered a 3.2 percentage point drop in satisfaction levels to 76.9 while Jet2holidays saw a lesser fall of 0.7% to 81.3.