Travel companies are reporting a surge in flight prices as customers struggle to rebook their holidays following the collapse of XL Leisure.

The cost of an easyJet flight to Tenerife on September 19 has doubled according to one London-based travel agent, at £437 for a return ticket.

The agent, who wants to remain anonymous, told Times Online that she has been inundated with calls from anxious XL customers. In a separate enquiry, she found that a Thomson flight for two from Gatwick to Lanzarote had increased from £460 to £1,342.

On a forum on Tripadvisor, one correspondent writes: "You will need to book new flights asap. My flight to Orlando in October has gone from £1,300 for family of four booked last month - looked today now want £3,150."

While the 67,000 passengers currently stranded abroad are being offered a host of rescue packages, several thousand are not protected and having to find their own way home.

A significant proportion of the 200,000 with forward XL bookings have also booked flights and accommodation independently and are now finding prices have soared.

Terry Ramsey of Clapham, southwest London, this morning found two easyJet flights to Crete to replace those booked on XL.

He orginally paid £285 per ticket to XL on a debit card - and today had to pay a further £390 per ticket to easyJet. In addition, his flights are into Heraklion not Hania, where his hotel is booked - so is having to fork out £130 for car hire as well.

Travel companies hoping to cash-in on the XL collapse have been bidding on XL keywords with search engines, in order to attract click-throughs from desperate holidaymakers.

Search for “XL”, and Google now brings up a number of sponsored links with headlines such as “Lost Your XL Holiday?” and “XL Travel Issues?”

Travel Counsellors, which is among the companies bidding on XL keywords with Google, says it has had a spike of up to 800 per cent in inquiries this morning.

Managing director Steve Byrne told Times Online: “We’ve had a lot of phone calls and website visits following the collapse, and we started contacting customers early this morning who had XL bookings, many of whom are now rebooked.”

He said that holidaymakers trying to find flights without the help of a travel expert could struggle. Byrne said availability so far hadn’t been a problem, but added: “We expect flight prices will go up as demand increases.”

A spokesman for TUI Travel PLC, Britain’s largest tour operator, said the company would do its best to assist XL customers, but warned that those due to travel this autumn could struggle to find flights.

He said: “There is not a huge amount of availability over the next few weeks to places like Egypt, which has been very popular this year. It’s going to be a bit of a squeeze for people in the next few weeks.”

According to Skyscanner, between midnight and 10:30am this morning, there were 12,193 flight searches on XL routes on the flight search website – an increase of 269 per cent on the same period yesterday.

A spokesman told Times Online: “We expect to see a significant upswing in this traffic as the news spreads.

“We saw similar rises on UK/North America route searches following the collapse of Zoom two weeks ago and again on Edinburgh routes yesterday after Ryanair announced they were cancelling 11 routes.”

Travelsupermarket.com has seen a more moderate increase, but holiday searches are nevertheless up 30 per cent week on week in the wake of the XL announcement.

A spokesman for the Association of British Travel Agents told Times Online that the organisation has been contacted by a number of concerned holidaymakers: “The phones have been ringing nonstop since 8am this morning,” he said.

He added though, that while tour operators had cut capacity in recent years, he expected there to be plenty of availability of flights and holidays for people wishing to rebook their winter sun break.

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