Global Travel group managing director Andy Stark said the consortium was also not anticipating any discounting in the lates market this year, as “prices seemed to be holding up”.

He added: “Trading is going well. From a summer perspective it is really pleasing.”

Alan Bowen, legal advisor to the Association of Atol Companies, also said prices in the lates market for European destinations remained strong: “People have found that airfares to Spain for example are very high. A lot of people wanting last-minute bookings haven’t been able to get what they wanted at the price they wanted.

“It could be great news in that it should encourage people to think about booking sooner next year.”

Despite this, Bowen warned that a number of small operators were “likely to have found life difficult this summer”. In particular, he said those specialising in eastern Mediterranean destinations had suffered. “It has been a tougher summer than most people thought,” he added.

Elite Travel group chief executive Neil Basnett agreed that certain sectors had seen a difficult summer, with overall sales at the consortium flat year-on-year.

However, he said this represented an improvement since March, when sales were around 6% behind. Long-haul remained strong, he said, but the cruise market had suffered as a result of recent capacity growth.

Basnett added that this was most evident with the river cruise market where sales were down about 20% with Elite’s key suppliers. “The whole industry has jumped on the band wagon of river cruise,” he added.

“If you look at the total river cruise market it may be showing an increase, but our key suppliers are getting so much competition the figures don’t seem that healthy.”

Hays Travel managing director John Hays said the agency had seen double digit year-on-year growth on sales for summer 2015. "We’ll be demonstrating a really strong financial year," he added.

Meanwhile fears mounted this week over the impact of China’s economic storm, when the country’s benchmark exchange in Shanghai fell by more than 8%.

Some £75 billion was wiped off the value of UK firms in response on Monday, in the worst slump since March 2009, although the FTSE 100 Index had started to recover by Tuesday.

Hays said the Chinese crash would have a mixed impact on the industry, but he described ensuing drops in oil prices as a “shot in the arm” for both.

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