Brittany Ferries reports surge in bookings to Ireland

Brittany Ferries has reported a surge in bookings for summer 2022, helped by large increases in bookings on routes from Spain and France to Ireland.

The ferry company has recently navigated a path through the two disastrous summer seasons brought about by Covid, and which resulted in passenger numbers “in the doldrums”.

However, the increase in reservations for next summer has brought renewed optimism with the prospect of sunnier skies ahead.

By the end of October, 188,878 passengers had booked travel for the holiday season, which is July to September 2022. That is 48 per cent more than the 127,517 who had booked for the 2020 summer season at the end of October 2019.

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In terms of breakdown by market, France-Ireland reservations for 2022 are currently up by 234 per cent while even on the predominantly freight Spain-Ireland route passenger bookings are up by over 80 per cent.

UK-France reservations are up by 40 per cent while on UK-Spain routes reservations rose by 35 per cent.

The wave of summer 2022 reservations follows assistance from the French state. A grant of €45 million was recently authorised by Paris to compensate for passenger travel restrictions that caused Brittany Ferries’ turnover to plummet by €220 million in 2020 alone.

Furthermore, Brittany Ferries has welcomed the extension of net wage provisions for French sailors, which has been extended for three years.

“The storm clouds are beginning to lift and I welcome the boost in reservations for next year,” said Christophe Mathieu, CEO of Brittany Ferries.

“We are so grateful to our loyal customers and, of course, to the French state for acknowledging our plight. The support of French government combined with the loyalty of our Irish and British customers will allow us to continue the beautiful voyage of this company.

“Amid a renewed sense of optimism, I must also add a note of caution. We still have much work to do in the years ahead. We must not forget the €117 million loan granted last year, which we have to repay.

“Nor must we change our path on our internal project to maximise efficiencies. Called Vital, I am delighted that it has been embraced by our hard-working seafarers.

“To them I would like to reiterate the words of our president Jean-Marc Roué: we are absolutely committed to your future and there will be no job losses as a consequence of this essential plan.”

Further good news for 2022 comes in the form of a brand-new ship. Brittany Ferries Salamanca will be the first vessel in the fleet to be powered by cleaner, greener liquefied natural gas. It will run on services connecting the UK with Spain and will join sister ship Galicia which joined the Brittany Ferries fleet in December last year.

Figures for the summer seasons of 2020 and 2021 underline just how difficult the last two years have been for Brittany Ferries and the size of the challenge ahead.

Around 80 per cent of the company’s income comes from passenger traffic and on some lines this dropped to virtually zero.

In total, the last two summer seasons combined drew in fewer than half of the passengers of a normal summer season.