Holiday giant Thomas Cook is expected to lay bare the impact of a European heatwave and a fall in demand for last-minute trips abroad when it unveils falling profits this week.
A consensus of City analysts expects the firm to post a 15% dive in underlying operating profit to £280 million for the full year to September.
It comes after the FTSE 250-listed group said earlier this year that an "unprecedented" prolonged period of hot weather across the continent meant more people spent June and July enjoying the sunshine at home and put off booking holidays abroad.
However, Thomas Cook's current trading performance should have improved or at least stabilised since it warned over profits in September.
Since then, holiday bookings for European destinations have not waned, broker Numis said, despite fears of a potential hard Brexit.
Kathryn Leonard, analyst at Numis, said: "The data suggests that demand has improved since Thomas Cook last reported.
"Indeed, the growth of keyword search terms versus the prior year have, on average, improved by circa 5% in the UK and by circa 17% in the Nordics."
Adding credence to the data, budget carriers easyJet recently said that forward bookings for next summer are "slightly ahead" of this summer, while Ryanair said Brexit had not affected demand from UK or European consumers for travel.
Numis said the comments from airlines are "supportive for the wider UK-listed travel sector, as investors remain vigilant of any slowdown in demand and later booking cycle", which would negatively impact profitability and working capital.
But it still flagged Brexit as a "key risk" for next year's figures.
The travel sector has been struggling lately due to ambiguity around Brexit, rising costs and slowing demand with recent profit warnings from Ryanair and Flybe, which last week put itself up for sale.
However, easyJet shrugged off strike woes and surging costs to notch up a 41% jump in annual profits last week.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here