NITN Exclusive Interview With Jet2.com and Jet2Holidays CEO Steve Heapy

Thank you. It's good to see you again. We've not met face to face for a few months now. It's been too long, so it's always good to talk to you.

A lot more positive than we were. The market now is getting back towards the levels we saw for summer 19. Summer 20 was massively disrupted, as was summer 21. But I think people are genuinely feeling like this is it now. We speak to our customers regularly. We've got an email database of nearly 4 million people and speak to them quite often. People think this is the end of the virus now. There might be new strains, but there will be less virulence. Governments have learned perhaps not to lock down too hastily. Looking at the window here, it's cloudy, about to go dark, it's been raining, cold, windy, dull, miserable. I want to get on holiday and get away from this, and lots of people do. It's been two and in some cases three years since people have had a holiday, and now this feels like the end. They want to get away and get their bit of sun, and everybody deserves that.

It's a lot stronger than it was. I think the nervousness is disappearing, and every day that we don't have any bad news, I think confidence will continue to increase. We are getting more and more confident about summer 22. In fact, today we've just put on, it'll be appearing on the screen shortly, more flying to Malaga and to Tenerife from Belfast for April. There's a few more flights going on there, a bit of additional capacity because sales have picked up rather well. As always, we will try and respond as and when we can and put more capacity on.

The most popular ones consistently, and I think this is partly because they're around the Canary Islands, the most popular is Tenerife. People are booking in significant numbers there, but the other Canarian destinations are good. Gran Canaria is always good. Lanzarote, we see the Balearic Islands pick up quite well, and Turkey's doing well also. The bookings are pretty strong. The hotels have good products, they've got good offers on, and people tried Turkey and Greece for the first time over the last couple of years when Spain was perhaps closed, and a lot of them have decided to go back. We've got a good range of destinations and they're all doing pretty well.

I was in the Canary Islands before Christmas. I was in Turkey on business last week. To be honest, you don't really notice in another country where you have to wear a mask. It's not that much hassle. I think over the next two to three weeks we will see restrictions lifted throughout Europe. I would hope by the time we get to summer, mask wearing everywhere is a thing of the past.

We work off international guidelines, and the guidelines are for airlines that mask wearing is still required. But we're watching very carefully the announcements of Boris Johnson at the end of February, and I think it's very likely we'll drop the mandatory use of masks. Even if the guidance is not that, if in other walks of life mask wearing isn't required anymore, it's not required on an aircraft. In fact, there's an argument that the regulations should be more lax on an aircraft than anywhere else because the air is circulated every three minutes through medical grade HEPA filters. So the best thing you can do is sit on an aircraft and have the air conditioning blowing on you because that's filtered. So we'll probably remove it at the end of February, but we will probably be asking customers to wear it until then until we get there.

For many years, as long as I've been working in travel, people have said that travel agents are going to be reducing numbers and it'll become a thing of the past. At the moment, there is a desire for people to speak to experts, to get first help, to get independent advice, not try and get tour operators selected hotels that they're trying to flog, but independent expert advice. That's why independent travel agents give us that. People over the last few years have been stung with the collapse of bed banks, the collapse of Monarch, the collapse of Thomas Cook, the pandemic having different transactions with different people. I think they want to have the security of booking through a travel agent who is an expert, and booking with a tour operator who actually looks after them and cares about them. So I think the future is very bright. The one thing that does worry me, as I've said in the past, is town centres. I know where you're in Belfast, it's a vibrant city center just as Manchester is and Sheffield, etc. But once you get to the smaller towns like the one where I come from, Oldham, and where I live now in Lee, in the Northwest, they are suffering. There's a lot of businesses closed down. There's not a lot of big high street big names. It's tough. We have to find a way for the government to breathe life back into the town centers. We've been asking for the government to do that, and I would hope that they will put some effort into doing that because the travel agents have been and can continue to be the hearts of the community.

I agree. We ran emergency call centers to cope with the excess volumes when we were in the middle of the pandemic, cancellations and amendments etc. The independent travel agents worked very hard to quickly change the business models, adapt the way they work. They works longer hours than ever before and they worked very, very hard fighting for their customers. They didn't have to fight us at all because we refunded very quickly without people asking, but the travel agents were working very, very hard for their customers. That's what they do. That's what you pay for. They're there to make things easy, take away the pain, and work hard for you when you need the help. They did it very well. I commend all the independent travel agents everywhere, but here in Northern Ireland they did a great job.

I would hope so. As I said, I think we're probably getting towards the end of the pandemic now and we should be back to normal. Each of the devolved administrations has the right to set their own rules, and we respect that. It's absolutely right that they do that, but from a slightly selfish point of view, it's difficult when you're running a business operating in the devolved nations to get consistent messages across to customers. I would hope that once we get back to normal, everything will be aligned again. It's been quite difficult because we have to give one message to one set of people and another to another. Where you've got a centralized function and people working in the call center, they have to very quickly learn what the rules and regulations are from each country to each country. For example, the rules from Northern Ireland to Spain might have been different from the rules from England to Spain or Scotland to Spain. They've got many versions of the rules to get their head around, and it's quite difficult. We're human, sometimes we make mistakes. There's even more of a minefield where you have cross-border traffic coming from the Republic and customers coming through Belfast International Airport with your sales, different rules that applied to that and the whole Brexit situation. That's a conversation for another day.

Very much so.

Yes. I'll elaborate slightly. I don't think there's any need for them. I know they're doing a simplified version, but I thought travel worked very, very well before the pandemic without passenger locator forms. They were introduced as an emergency measure because of the pandemic, and in my opinion there is no need for them. We will carry on asking for their removal. I think customers and travel agents should as well. Governments of all nationalities have a habit of introducing emergency legislation and keeping hold of bits of it. There's no need. It's hassle, it's an extra form to fill in, it's worry. We didn't need it two years ago, and in my opinion we don't need it now. Let's just get back to normal.

We've reduced our emissions already, on aircraft, in the ground, in the offices. We've ordered another 75 brand new aircraft, Airbus A321, which are the cleanest in their class. We're spending a lot of money. The gross transaction value before discounts of those aircraft was $10.1 billion. So we're investing a lot of money into going greener. But of course we still emit carbon dioxide until new technology is invented that is non-carbon dioxide producing. We will always produce carbon dioxide. What we have to do is, once we've reduced that as much as we can, look at offsetting the carbon. We have a scheme now whereby we already offset carbon as part of government schemes by paying for carbon credits. We will be offsetting voluntarily the remainder of all the carbon dioxide over and above that period into government schemes, and we will be investing in schemes throughout the world that will either prevent the creation of carbon dioxide or remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That's from the first of January 2022. So when people book a flight or a holiday with Jet2.com or Jet2 Holidays, any carbon produced will be offset in respect to the flight. We're also working with hoteliers putting in place a scheme whereby we will be looking at a certification for the hotel. If they meet a certain set of parameters, they will be given a sustainability badge, and we'll be offering people the opportunity to search for sustainable hotels. The data from the search engines suggest that people are more and more interested in booking sustainable holidays, and they're looking for sustainable hotels, so we'll be offering that as part of the search process.

Quite a lot actually. We've got summer 23 on sale, we have done for a long time. So it's not just about summer 22. We've got next winter on sale, we've got summer 23. We are looking at hopefully putting some more flights into summer 23 as well. There's three aircraft on sale at the moment, and hopefully we can put some more flights on sale. We're looking at new destinations for summer 23, the new ones for summer 22 are doing well, and we're looking at doing more and hopefully introducing them to Northern Ireland as well. We're working very hard with our hotel partners to try and get more product. For example, in Faro we've got a brand new product that has come to us, the 3HB Guarana, fantastic five-star hotel in the Algarve. We're looking at getting more new products all the time and giving people what they want. We're offering more choice than ever in terms of hotels. We don't have a narrow range of product and try to funnel people into our own branded hotels. There's no conflict there. We don't have our own hotels. We concentrate on providing the best experience for the flights and the holiday and the transfer, and we work with our hotel partners to make sure people get the best experience. We're all about providing the widest range of choice and making sure people have the best experience.

Well thank you. One thing we've done is not compromise on quality. We've seen other tour operators that have reduced their overseas customer helper presence or completely removed it. We have kept the levels that we've always had, both in the airport and in resort, because now more than ever people want advice. They want to make sure that they've got someone to help them if they need assistance. We kept the quality, and it's good that you notice that. If you go to any of our airports either in the UK or overseas, you will see our red team that are there to help people. Some airlines, you've got more chance of finding Lord Lucan than someone to help you. That's about 50 years ago. But it's one thing we will never compromise on: customer service. We want to make sure that our customers get the best experience. It's easy to do that. We all go on holiday, we all know what it's like, we all know we want a hassle-free holiday, we want to be treated like a king or a queen. So it's very easy to provide the service that people want. We will not compromise on customer service. That's why we win the awards: Best Tour Operator with Travel Weekly and TTG, that's why we've been voted in the world's top 10 airlines for the last three years according to TripAdvisor, fifth best in the world last year. We concentrate on that. Best Tour Operator at the Northern Ireland Travel Award... I did realize I missed that one out as well, sorry. That is our most coveted award. The reason I didn't mention that, I was so honored and aghast at winning it that my mind went blank. On a serious note, it's very flattering that we do win that because we work very hard to provide it. The fact that people in Northern Ireland have taken the trouble to show their appreciation and vote for us is very flattering. The red team in the airport and in hotels see that, and it makes them very proud and it makes them work even harder, so it's a virtuous circle.

Well, it's very easy when things are going well to provide good customer service. But our word mantra was, you've got to provide the same level of customer service when things aren't going well. We've been through a hellish two years. I would urge customers and travel agents to remember who refunded you quickly without you asking, who looked after you on their call centers as they did before, who had the staff in the airport to look after them, who had overseas customers helpers in resorts to look after them when they wanted them. The answer in all cases is Jet2 Holidays. I'm not sure you could say that for other tour operators.

We are planning for summer 23 at the moment. We've rolled over the capacity for summer 22, so there's three aircraft on sale. But we are looking at potentially more capacity, and hopefully we can see what we can do in Belfast. We may have new destinations, either new to Belfast that we do from other places, or brand new destinations that we can do from Belfast. We're still working on that at the moment. We've got an eye, well both eyes, on the future now. Hopefully understandably, over the last two years we've been very much on the here and now, changing flight schedules at short notice etc. But I'm hoping we're out of this now, so we've got an eye on the future again. As always, Alan Cross, head of trade, is very much into speaking to travel agents etc. I think he'll be over in Northern Ireland soon. I'm hoping to join him. I have let you down over the last few years. I always say I'll come to one of your events and I don't. I had a good excuse one year because the flight was cancelled because it was snowing. Other years it was less convincing. I think you normally have something in June, don't you?

Well, I will try my best. The reason I mentioned that is because I hope by then we will have summer 23 all planned, and we'll know what new destinations and what new hotel product we've got. It'd be a very opportune moment to confirm that with you. Obviously we'll let you know before then. But I'd be very pleased to meet all our independent travel agent partners when we're over there. I know some of them quite well from the conferences we've had. They're all very hardworking, very loyal. I think it's amazing that they've continued to provide the levels of service that they have done over the last two years. I'd like to thank them for all the support and the hard work and making sure our mutual customers... when a customer works with a travel agent, it's their customer, but they entrust them to us. They've done a great job in keeping customers happy, and we'll benefit. It's an investment. You look after your customers in the bad times as well as the good, and they will remember that for a long time and come back.

Me too.

It's been a pleasure talking to you. It's always a pleasure visiting Northern Ireland and always a pleasure reading the Ulster Fry as well. I read that whenever I can. That's very funny, it keeps me up to date with what's going on in a lighthearted way. It's a lovely place. I will be back, and we'll meet up when I'm there.

Thanks Jonathan, thank you.