National Holidays will shrug off collapse of former owner, JG Travel Group says

JG Travel Group has insisted National Holidays will not be tainted by the collapse of its former parent as the brand re-opened for trade sales.

Sales and marketing director Danny Crowe said the response from agents and customers to its return had been overwhelmingly positive.

But he admitted there is always uncertainty when a brand is plucked from a failed operation.

"You are always wary of any company you buy out of administration but there was no way we could not bring National Holidays back," he said. "The swell of demand from travel agents and customers direct was incredible."

National’s former owner, Specialist Leisure Group (SLG) went into administration in May, blaming the impact of Covid-19.

The group had over 64,000 bookings, the vast majority of which were coach package holidays.

In addition to National, SLG owned and operated Shearings Holidays and Wallace Arnold Travel.

Crowe said "95% of the 10,000 comments" on the Facebook page were positive. However, a number of customers have been asking the new owners for a refund following the collapse of SLG.

"But that has nothing to do with us," Crowe said. "We have taken on the brand and the data base but not the liabilities.

"We are getting some people ringing through saying ‘what about our refund’ but there are a lot more ringing up with excitement.

"People have also jumped on Facebook saying ‘the refunds have nothing to do with these guys, will you stop moaning. All they are trying to do is give us a holiday’."

Crowe said JG Travel Group also looked at acquiring Shearings but concluded the operation had too many overlaps with Just Go Holidays.

"We didn’t feel Shearings expanded our breadth of product and offering enough whereas National filled a very good area," he said. "It’s northern based, whereas we have been stronger in the south, and it’s also more of a mass market, value product."

He added: "We are in a time when there is not much good news so it’s nice to have something positive to say."

Crowe said around 40 of the ‘core National tours’ have been re-launched, using the same pick-up points and adding a dozen more, with more products to follow.

"We will significantly add to the program, a lot more will be added every day," he said.

European tours will also be introduced ‘at some point’.

"We’ll add Europe in the next couple of months but the important thing is when to operate them from," Crowe said. "Europe by coach this year is almost a non-starter. The public just don’t want to travel.

"They are not worried about the health and safety of the coach, or the hotel, they’re worried about not being able to get home.

"Our Just Go European programme is non-existent for Q4. In September we had loads of trips to Italy, but the customer said we just don’t want to go."

Director of Product and Operations at JG Travel Group, Paul Mason, said of National Holidays: "We have listened to customers and focused on building the really popular tours. We have maintained all of the coach pick up points previously operated by National Holidays and added quite a few new ones, so there is plenty of choice for the customer."

Claire Dutton, formerly of Shearings and Superbreak, has been named as Trade Sales Manager.

By Steve Jones, Contributing Editor