People have been flocking to book up their winter and summer breaks, according to travel group First Choice.

The Crawley-based company said its increased focus on long-haul holidays had resulted in a surge of early bookings.

It said the move helped it record a 20 per cent hike in bookings for next summer and a seven per cent increase in reservations for this winter.

First Choice, whose brands include Unijet, Falcon and Sovereign, revealed in an update ahead of full-year results that annual trading would be in line with expectations. The tour operator has been concentrating on selling medium and long-haul holidays in a bid to overcome tough competition in its sector.

It said long-haul bookings for this winter were 26 per cent ahead of the same time last year, while summer reservations were 57 per cent higher - although it was still too early to predict trends.

Meanwhile, bookings for medium-haul trips were up 13 per cent for the winter and 30 per cent higher for the summer.

During the past year, revenues at the activity holidays arm were marginally ahead, while the specialist holidays division continued to perform strongly.

The online division also performed well, with the number of bed-nights sold up by 125 per cent on the same period last year and outperforming its target of four million.

The figures come despite a challenging market for the mainstream holiday sector - a situation that has led rival MyTravel into financial difficulties in the past two years.

As well as increasing its focus on medium and long-haul destinations, First Choice has been moving its focus towards package holidays and away from flight-only bookings.

This was because of tough competition from low-cost airlines in a sector that delivers low profit margins.

First Choice said in its interim results in June that losses for the traditionally weaker winter period were narrowed to £39.9 million against £44.1 million last time.

The group is due to report results for the year to October 31 on December 14.

Analysts are expecting it to post pre-tax profits of about £99 million, compared with £87.1 million the previous year.