The price of seats on flights from UK airports such as Stansted, Luton and Gatwick are being slashed in an effort to drive up demand for holidays in 2012.

Tour operators and travel agents say they are offering major discounts to travellers for the winter period right up until the last minute.

Holidaymakers have been reluctant to commit to getaways but tourist companies are hoping that they can be tempted by the great deals on offer.

Managing director at Jewel in the Crown Holidays, Platon Loizou, said: “In a normal year, it is difficult to get anything for Christmas and new year at this stage.

“But this year we were selling 19-night bed and breakfast packages in Goa up to the last minute from £534, with two-week flight-only deals departing December 31 from £374.

“We’re selling seats at crazy prices to cut our losses. Basically, consumers are so punch-drunk at soaring living costs, fuel prices, rail fares and day-to-day living that they are reluctant to spend on travel, both short-haul and long-haul.

“Prices must fall by about £200 to get people interested; 14 nights this winter in Goa, originally £725, is selling around £525. In summer, two weeks in a hotel in Marmaris, Turkey, starts at £299.”

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A new mega mall in Morocco is likely to draw in hordes of tourists over the coming years, it has been suggested.

Pop star and actress Jennifer Lopez opened the new Casablanca shopping centre – which the developers behind the project have called the biggest mall in Africa.

The new development will offer fresh appeal for those looking to complement the traditional bazaars for which Morocco is already so well known with some more-contemporary offerings.

Mall officials have said that tourists are among their main target markets.

Secretary-general, Jenane Laghrar expects around a fifth of people visiting the mall to arrive from foreign soil.

Holidaymakers with a stringent shopping agenda will be able to glance around Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dior and Ralph Lauren boutiques and department store Galeries Lafayette – as long as they remember to leave enough time to catch their airport transfers to get home.

People looking for the new mall should have no difficulties finding it either – the silver building is perched on the coastline.

Salwa Akhannouch, head of the Aksal group and the driving force behind the mall, said: “It is a great honour for Morocco to have a project of such dimensions.”

The mall opened earlier this month, with local luminaries on hand to watch Lopez cut the ribbon.

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There were fewer delays for holidaymakers at major UK airports including Luton, Stansted and Gatwick last summer, according to official figures.

Almost three-quarters (73%) of chartered flights were on time at 10 of Britain’s biggest airports during the period July to September – marking a 10% leap in punctuality compared with the same period in 2010. The Civil Aviation Authority also found that the average delay time on charter flights was 22 minutes, a seven-minute improvement on the same period the previous year.

However, the on-time figures were probably boosted by the fact that there were 4.1% fewer chartered flights compared to the summer before, the authority found. On the other hand, scheduled flights showed an improvement at the UK’s 10 major airports, even though there were slightly more scheduled flights this summer (0.4%) compared with 2010.

Scheduled flights showed 79% punctuality from July to September, a 7% rise on summer 2010’s figures. Scheduled flight delays dropped to just 12 minutes on average, compared with 16 minutes the previous summer. Luton showed an 11% rise in on-time scheduled flight performance, with Stansted rising by 10%.

Among the most-travelled routes in the third quarter of the year, flights operating out of Larnaca, Cyprus, had the worst on-time performance (61%), with services to Toronto in Canada showing the highest average delay (23 minutes).

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Turkish Airlines has begun flying to Gatwick Airport from Istanbul.

The first plane on the route came into Gatwick this week and was ceremoniously marked by Ahmet Demirok, Turkey’s consul general in London; Sezgin Saglam, Turkish Airlines sales manager; and Necdet Sark, the airline’s branch director for London.

Also present were former Manchester United players Bryan Robson and Denis Irwin, as the team is sponsored by the company.

Turkish Airlines now uses five UK airports, including Heathrow and Stansted, so arranging airport transfers in advance could come in handy.

During the ceremony Mr Saglam pointed out that Turkish Airlines was named best airline in Europe by online reviewers Skytrax. The award was said to recognise the company’s high standard of in-flight service and the wide range of places it flies to across the continent.

He said the firm is always looking to increase the number of destinations it covers, currently 190 worldwide.

Gatwick’s chief commercial officer, Guy Stephenson, said: “We are competing with other airports in London and the South East in order to give passengers the greatest choice of destinations to fly to.

“We already offer a choice of over 200 destinations, which is more than any other airport in the UK.”

Holidaymakers could save as much as £111 if they sensibly use cards abroad and are smart about how they exchange their currency, according to a Government-run watchdog.

The maximum figure applies to a family of four spending two weeks around the Mediterranean on a holiday costing £2,180.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) said anything between £63 and £111 can be saved if currency is bought online before departure from airports such as Heathrow and Luton, and if cards that are free to use abroad are utilised.

This represents a saving of between 2.8% and 4.8% of the total holiday bill, OFT said.

Savings were calculated by comparing the strategy against, for example, using a credit card to pay the hotel bill and buying foreign currency in the UK at a more typical bureau de change.

OFT also found:

:: Banks charged debit card users a total of £410 million in 2010 alone for using the bankcard while on holiday.

:: Banks also took in £260 million by charging people to use their credit card abroad.

:: Withdrawing money at a foreign cash machine costs banks and building societies more because they are charged fees by either Visa Europe or MasterCard and by the bank which owns the cash machine being used.

:: Banks also charge their customers more if a particular transaction occurs and or if a particular card is used.

:: The Post Office sells more foreign currency than all others, comprising 28% of the market.

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The choice of holiday that people make during the peak booking period of January and February is said to be influenced by the television shows and films they watch over Christmas and new year, according to the Association of British Travel Agents.

Many holiday firms also tend to start their TV adverts for the following year on Boxing Day to get as many people as possible heading to the airport such as Heathrow and Stansted.

BBC1’s Frozen Planet series, for example, has inspired many to investigate trips to the Antarctic and the Arctic.

Also likely to feed demand for those regions are US-based documentary Earthflight, which follows snow geese from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Pole, and Bear’s Wild Weekend With Miranda, in which comedian Miranda Hart treks the Swiss Alps with explorer Bear Grylls.

Other regions being promoted are India, with presenters from motoring show Top Gear travelling the massive nation’s cities, and the US, when TV celebrities Dara O’Briain, Rory McGrath, Griff Rhys Jones mark the 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty in Three Men Go To New England.

Films also likely to inspire a bit of travelling are Ratatouille, which sees a rat become a chef in a Parisian restaurant, and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, in which animals break out from a New York zoo and return to their homeland.

Middle Eastern airline Emirates is to add a new plane to its route to Dubai from London Heathrow Airport as part of plans to boost its overall capacity.

An Airbus A380 will replace the route’s current Boeing 777 from March 25 next year in a move that will make the airline the largest operator of Airbus A380s at Heathrow.

The new addition will be the fourth Airbus A380 making the journey from Heathrow to Dubai after Emirates previously announced that it will be launching its third A380 service on the route from January 24, 2012. The plane will also replace a Boeing 777 in this instance.

Heathrow is notorious for its limitations in terms of passenger numbers, but Emirates hopes to get round this by introducing more A380s, which are the world’s largest passenger planes.

Salem Obaidalla, Emirates’ senior vice president of commercial operations in Europe, said: “This demonstrates the beauty of the A380 – its ability to increase our service to our passengers in style and without adding traffic to London Heathrow’s busy schedule. We would like to acknowledge the support and cooperation of the Heathrow authorities in bringing a fourth A380 to the British capital.”

The airline also has plans to add wireless internet access to all of its Airbus superjumbos in the future. It is already available on 11 of the planes, with the remaining eight due to follow.

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Britain and France are leading the way in Europe when it comes to Christmas getaways, according to a new survey.

While their governments are at loggerheads over the eurozone and the future of the European Union, UK and French tourists are spending more on festive short-break getaways this year than any other Europeans, revealed the poll.

Research by lastminute found that UK tourists are forking out an average of £460 per person on Christmas and new year short breaks.

This figure was beaten only by France, at £481 per person.

The Irish are paying £371 for their festive short breaks, just below the European average of £373 per person.

The study, taking into account flights and accommodation, revealed that the Germans are only prepared to part with an average of £277 for their getaways.

And it revealed that British and Irish travellers favour different destinations, with Paris the most-booked festive short-break destination for UK travellers, while Barcelona was the most popular for the Irish.

And while Europeans’ festive getaways last an average of four days, the Spanish and Italians are taking five days.

UK and Spanish tourists are generally staying in three-star accommodation despite four-star establishments being the most popular overall.

Eva Bojtos, of lastminute UK and Ireland, said it was interesting to see that “so many of us refuse to miss out on our holidays and are still treating ourselves” over the festive period despite tough economic times across the continent.

Figures have shown that the number of people travelling via Gatwick Airport rose last month.

Passenger numbers reached 2.13 million during November, marking the 11th consecutive month of growth and suggesting that many people took airport transfers to Gatwick during the period.

The month was affected by political unrest in Egypt and Tunisia, which led to a slump in people going on holiday to these countries.

This led to the number of flights going to and from Gatwick falling 4.5%. However this was offset by the fact that the planes in operation were carrying 0.6% more passengers than the previous month.

The figures were announced as the big Christmas getaway began, with predictions that Gatwick will handle 1.5 million passengers over the Christmas period.

Meanwhile, it was announced that Air China will run services from the airport next year. The carrier will operate four times a week from Gatwick to Beijing from May 2012.

Guy Stephenson, Gatwick Airport’s chief commercial officer, said: “We are very excited that Air China has chosen to grow its London-Beijing route from Gatwick.

“China is the world’s fastest growing major economy, and the second largest economy behind the United States.

“For the UK, broadening its trade links with the fast-growing developing markets typified by China is a priority, but in order to achieve this, London and the South East needs to retain its status as one of the best connected cities in the world.”

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Passengers, airports and airlines will all come first thanks to new aviation regulations announced by transport minister Theresa Villiers.

Ms Villiers announced the Civil Aviation Bill, which is set to be introduced in 2012, at a meeting of the House of Commons Transport Committee.

The move comes after she said that the current legislation was limited and in need of changing.

The new Bill will provide the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with the power to help major airports provide passengers with a better customer service.

Ms Villiers told the committee: “We want to put passengers’ interests first. The aviation industry has changed considerably and the regulation of the industry needs to be updated.”

The Bill, which is currently in draft form, will also transfer power for regulating aviation security to the CAA from the Department for Transport.

But the Government will still maintain responsibility for security policy.

Changes could also be made to the CAA-run Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing (Atol) scheme as a last-minute addition to the Bill. The Atol scheme protects passengers flying from a range or airports, including Stansted, Gatwick and Luton, from the collapse of an airline or tour operator.

She added: “I think it would be in (air) passengers’ interests to be given a wider range of travel information. Shining the light of transparency on (airport and airline) performance is going to be a real plus for passengers.”

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