Thomson sells holidays and holiday homes |
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Published
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Mon, 30 May 2005 18:50
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While booking tickets with your travel agency and fulfilling your holiday plans, you can now also make your overseas home plans come true! Leading travel agency, Thomson is making a foray into the real estate agency market in partnership with overseas property firm, Parador Properties, and for the first time, foreign properties will be available to people at a high street shop.
Thomson will enable people to surf through foreign homes available at its 750 high street shops via computers and take a virtual tour across the various properties that Thomson is offering in Cyprus, Spain and Portugal.
According to a study conducted by the tour-operator on about 1,600 people, it was found that as many as 55% of people wished to purchase a property abroad that could serve as their second home or in many cases, even their main residence.
In fact, a whopping half a million foreign properties have already been bought, and of that amount, half of the homes were taken in the sunny country of Spain. The survey also revealed that Portugal enjoyed the maximum popularity amongst people who were aged between 40 and 50.
| Thomson’s marketing director, Miles Morgan, commented on the company’s new venture into the estate agent market, calling it a “natural step”, and said, "Thanks to the growth of low cost travel, television programmes about living abroad and people looking to invest in property rather than pensions, owning a home abroad is now a realistic option for lots of people.”
He added that the travel market had intensively transformed in the recent years and for a tour operator to withstand and deliver exceptional results in a competitive market, it was essential to offer customers something fresh and new.
Meanwhile, Sean Tipton, at the Association of British Travel Agents, remarked, “Many more travel agents are looking into new areas and it makes sense for them to start selling property abroad. If you look at places like Spain, where property prices are traditionally lower, the trend for holidaymakers to buy property is growing. Thomson is well placed to get involved because they are the experts at selling holidays in these places.”
Thomson intends to assist keen foreign property buyers through this move and benefit from the increasing demand for such properties and homes abroad. However, more than half, about 66 % of people seemed oblivious to basic information and didn’t even know how properties could actually be bought abroad.
The research additionally disclosed 38 % of people considering foreign homes so that they would not have to resort to cumbersome and expensive hotels and inns during a holiday. About 50 percent of youngsters between ages 16-24 yrs, relatively with lower costs of living, were found to feel this way.
Thomson expects to sell about 1,000 properties in its initial year of foreign property sales.
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