Contrary to what you might think, the busiest time in travel is January.

Well it is if you’re in the business of selling holidays. It’s that time from about 10.35am on December 27th when everyone has kicked out the in-laws, over-eaten, over-drunk and generally had enough of the weather being completely crap; when having some sunshine to look forward to might be the only thing to get us through the next few months. The industry has even given this time its own name – TOY – Turn of Year.

TOY 2020 was progressing well at TUI. We were on course for our biggest ever year and the day to day of the marketing team was taken up by monitoring and optimising the effectiveness of our campaign. We had also launched a new campaign for our second brand, ‘First Choice’, which looked to put more focus on the value end of the market.

But of course COVID-19 was on its way and was about to transform the lives of the marketing team and indeed...