Ian Mounser of Superbreak receives the CBI "Fit for the Future" Award

Approximately 20% of Hotel Breaks' customers book rail inclusive holidays. We estimate that up to another 30% purchase their rail tickets from another source. The disruption suffered in the wake of the Hatfield and Selby disasters clearly discouraged rail travel and indeed this aspect of our business was noticeably affected. However, despite this and the November 2000 floods affecting some customers' ability or desire to travel, overall demand remained buoyant throughout the autumn and winter months.

London is the principal rail destination. One reason why pre-Christmas bookings held up so well was our success in selling good numbers of Millennium Dome breaks throughout calendar year 2000, in spite of the adverse publicity which the project attracted from the media. A further boost came through the acquisition of Rainbow Holidays in September 2000. Across the year we estimate that sales growth was enhanced by approximately 10% due to the acquisition. Initially we continued to use existing brochure stocks but merged Rainbow into the Superbreak and Hotel Breaks programmes from April 2001.

Whilst the rail problems eased as we moved into spring 2001, the foot and mouth epidemic posed a further threat. Initially, we did see bookings for Devon, the Lakes and other countryside destinations falling away. However, these have never been a major part of our overall mix and it soon became apparent that increased bookings for city, town and seaside breaks would more than compensate. Foot and mouth did undoubtedly affect our fledgling inbound business which comes mainly from Holland, Ireland and the USA.