Not for love or money. That's the answer you will get if you ask about the chances of grabbing a last-minute bargain sun or ski holiday in the next week through an Irish travel agent. There is "absolutely nothing" available, a woman in one Dublin travel agents said emphatically.
"It's virtually impossible to get anything," the president of the Irish Travel Agents' Association, Mr Gerry Benson, said. He booked his own winter holiday five months ago.
Yesterday one of the earliest getaways available was two seats to Lanzarote on February 21st from Budget Travel. "But it's very tight," a spokesman said, "and that's just what's available now."
The Canaries - Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Lanzarote - are the most popular winter sun destination. "It's four hours away and the temperature is in the 70s," the Budget spokesman said. "For a week it's the ideal location. It's a steady market and there's very little discounting on it."
There has been a huge upsurge in the number of Irish people taking winter holidays. After two dismal summers it seems more people want a blast of winter sunshine to get them through the first grey months of the year.
Those who book well in advance include hoteliers, farmers and B & B owners who use the downtime of winter to take their main holiday.
Many of those packing their sunblock or ski boots booked their winter break up to a year ago. Falcon Holidays' marketing manager, Mr Damien Mooney, said there had been record demand for packages both summer and winter.
"People are actually requesting brochures a lot earlier and booking a lot earlier." The key dates around Christmas usually sell less than two hours after the brochure is published. "People seem to be in the situation of having excess money to spend," Mr Benson said. "And they're spending it on cars, houses and holidays."
Around 70,000 people are expected to go on a winter holiday between October and next March, an average of almost 3,000 a week. This figure includes those going on skiing holidays.
"Skiing is a comparatively new winter holiday for Irish people," Mr Benson said. "Ten years ago there were around 1,000 to 2,000 clients a year." Most of those people went to Austria. Now the market includes Andorra in the Spanish Pyrenees, Italy, the US and Canada.
Although the industry does not have an official figure for those who will take to the slopes this year it is expected to be more than 25,000.
"This year has just been phenomenal," according to Mr Ray Scully, manager of Inghams, a Dublin agent specialising in ski holidays. "Between all the operators we should be sending away 26,000 skiers over the season. Just two years ago that figure was 16,000."
Mr Scully said there was no availability until mid-January for skiing holidays. But people "should be able to get away for a reduced price then."
As a barometer of prosperity the growth in the package-holiday market shows just how much disposable income is being disposed of and where.
Irish people have become used to the idea of a package summer holiday and are now likely to consider it normal to take a second, and even a third, holiday at another time in the year.
British tour operators were among the first to spot the potential in the Irish market. Last year Thomson Holidays bought Budget Travel from its rival, the Granada Group. Sunworld was bought by Thomas Cook, and JWT, the forefather of the package holiday business, was sold to a British operator, First Choice, owner of Falcon Holidays.
The result is that almost 80 per cent of the package holidays sold to Irish customers are controlled by British companies. Earlier this month First Choice reported that Irish bookings for summer holidays in 1998 were up by 30 per cent.
Part of the increase in bookings for 1998 was put down to Falcon's early introduction of its summer brochure, in October. Budget Travel publishes its summer brochure next week.
The rush to book was also fuelled by the painful memories of those who held out for last-minute summer bargains last summer. People found themselves with very little choice of holiday, never mind a bargain in a tightly controlled market.
The ITAA reckons that around 420,000 package holidays will have been sold this year and this will grow, but by only 10 per cent in 1998. In 1995 it was thought that the market was between 350,000 and 360,000 summer seats, with the remaining packages sold in the winter season.
"It's not surprising that a lot of people are taking winter holidays as it would cost around about the same amount to stay for a week in any hotel in Ireland," Mr Benson said, as yesterday's rain fell in grey sheets outside. Nice weather for a travel agent? "Absolutely gorgeous," he said. "And long may it last."