For a company that started life in the U.K. in 2012, Loveholidays now has a presence in eight markets. It also has about 15% of the U.K. packaged travel market, up from 5% in 2019, according to head of strategy Isabella Cheng.
In a PhocusWire studio interview at Phocuswright Europe 2026, Cheng discussed the dynamics of the packaged travel market. She shared that package penetration in core markets has grown from 61% in 2019 to 69%.
“Within packages we see two types of players: dynamic package players like ourselves and more traditional, typically flight-based tour operators. Typically that means we’re using our technology to aggregate the entire market.”
Cheng said dynamic packaging in the U.K. has grown from about 2% of the total packaged market in 2009 to approximately 25% now.
She also spoke about Loveholiday’s artificial intelligence (AI) strategy to only use the technology where it delivers real value. A good example is Loveholiday’s chatbot Sandy, which was born during COVID, but has seen significant investment in the years since then.
“It now handles 600 different questions customers might have. It manages 60% of our chats and 20% of our calls. Most importantly, it delivers customer satisfaction on par with agents. We estimate Sandy has probably saved us about £4 million every year,” Cheng said.
More broadly, the company has a three-pronged strategy for AI: driving revenue growth, customer experience and operational efficiency.
“In our engineering team we've seen production deployments go up 73% year on year whilst headcount has been flat or even slightly lower. Something like 70% plus of our code is AI assisted. But importantly, what it means is we can take those efficiencies and reinvest back into innovation, across all of those areas.”
Cheng also discussed continuing to monitor the market for a potential initial public offering and ongoing growth without a public listing.
See below for the full interview with PhocusWire's Linda Fox.
Growth strategy and global ambition at loveholidays
Tags: Phocuswright Europe 2026 Isabella Cheng Loveholidays artificial intelligence
