The fragile recovery of the travel and leisure sector looks to have hit a bump in the road as companies across the industry struggle with little visibility on customer bookings.

Jet2 owner Dart Group (DTG:AIM) says winter demand has so far failed to match up even to its revised capacity, with bookings ‘displaying a shorter lead time than in previous years’.

Budget airline EasyJet (EZJ) also cited a lack of visibility after it cut the number of planes it plans to fly in the fourth quarter of this year, as it looks to manage cash burn amid a big drop in travel demand.

Speaking to Shares following its half-year results, PPHE Hotels’ (PPH) chief financial officer Daniel Kos revealed most of the demand the company sees is leisure-driven, almost entirely domestic customers, with weekend bookings relatively high but midweek trade – mostly involving business customers – ‘still very low’.

Kos says: ‘We’re seeing a younger guest demographic, with very short bookings leads, it’s very volatile. We have low visibility on bookings at the moment – really now a lot of people book on the same week or even the same day.’

He says PPHE, with a cash position of £137 million, has the balance sheet strength to cope for now but concedes the company will eventually need weekday corporate demand to return and for visibility to improve on bookings.

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