A South Farnham travel agent with celebrity clients says demand for bookings is rising despite warnings of jet fuel shortages and holiday chaos.

Neil Bonner has urged would-be holidaymakers to ignore the headlines and scaremongers as the travel industry is adapting well to the impact of the Iran conflict.

And even though he admits the outbreak in late February was “scary” as he had clients in The Gulf, bookings to places like Dubai, Doha and the Maldives are rising.

“There’s still demand and, if anything, things have picked up,” said Neil, one half of the husband-and-wife team at The Invisible Travel Agent based in The Bourne.

“People still want to go away.

“But the speculation and scaremongering has been horrible and when you have Simon Calder warning about fewer flights, cancellations and higher fares, it grates.

“So many people take his word for gospel and it can really hurt us. Instead of listening to him I wish people would just talk to people like us instead.

“Most of the airlines are swallowing it and taking it on the chin.”

While their firm is called the Invisible Travel Agent, they’ve got a big presence online with 15,000 followers on Facebook and a national customer base.

Mr Bonner launched the ITA in 2020 but has around a decade of experience in travel, while his firm offers everything from city weekends and country breaks to long haul holidays, bespoke tours and World Cup packages.

So it’s fair to say he’s a reputable source for what is happening in the industry.

He said: “It’s one of those things that’s been blown out of proportion and my company has only had one incident that resulted from what Trump has done.

“A family booked a long time ago to go to Mauritius with Air Mauritius and they had to increase the tax on their air fare because of what happened.

“Because she is a regular customer we discounted it but there’s only been one or two cases like that and most airlines are just carrying on as usual.

“When it all happened at the end of February I didn’t know what was happening and got a phonecall from my wife.

“I was a little scared because we had people in the area and we also had people in Thailand transferring through Dubai, but we got them all home.

“But people are still booking holidays in Dubai, and we’re still getting a lot of people wanting to go to the Maldives.”

It’s worth mentioning that while 13,000 flights were cancelled in April, many of these were on marginal routes with around 111,000 flights scheduled on the average day.

Neil insists he’s seen nothing to suggest that people are being more cautious, but admittedly he has noticed a drop in flights to the US in recent months.

He said: “I’ve not done as many New York and Vegas trips as usual but a lot of that is down to Trump – he’s just a lunatic, isn’t he?”