Member of the UK Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMC) made nearly 3.6m booking for the first quarter of 2007 – it highest quarterly figure ever.
The figure was 15% up on the bookings for the previous quarter and 12% higher than for the same period in 2006.
The Guild said that the 2007 figure was 80% up on the figure for the last quarter of 2002 when its Quarterly Transaction Survey began.
Year to year comparisons show that bookings for air in the first quarter of 2007 were 1,813,781, 6% up on 2006; for hotels 793,277, up19%; for rail 737,956, up 23% and car hire 101,752, up 12%.
There was also a rise of 26% compared with 2006 in ancillary bookings, like car parking, insurance and passport and visa services.
Philip Carlisle, the GTMC ceo, said: "Guild members are providing an increasingly diverse range of travel-related services to help ensure that travellers' time is used to best possible commercial effect, and client companies are recognising, and capitalising on, that fact."
Rezidor to open six Park Inns in Europe
The Rezidor Hotel Group is to open six more of its mid-market Park Inn hotels in Europe, five in Germany and one in the UK.
The five properties in Germany will be three re-branded Novotels and two re-branded Dormotels.
The first to open under its new brand will be the 180-room Park Inn Mannheim in July.
It will be followed by the Park Inn Düsseldorf Süd (118 rooms) in September and the Park Inn Bielefeld (also 118 rooms) in October.
The last two, the 120-room Park Inn Hamburg Nord and the121-room Park Inn Mainz, are due to open in 2008.
The new UK hotel will be in a 252-room new build in Manchester. It is due to open in the third quarter of 2009.
Rezidor said it now had more than 300 hotels in the EMEA region.
Kurt Ritter, president and ceo of Rezidor, said: "Breaking the 300 is an important milestone for our company and opening five Park Inn hotels a further step for our strategic development in Germany."