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Travel Counsellors reports 10% rise in sales
Homeworking company Travel Counsellors has unveiled a 10% rise in sales year on year, despite ongoing uncertainty for the industry.
Global sales for the financial year ending 31 October were £346 million.
This includes a 7% increase in the UK and a 20% growth in sales in the company’s overseas operations.
The previous year the company’s sales jumped by 25%.
For 2012, the company expects sales to increase by around 13% to £390m.
The company now has over 700 agents running their own travel businesses from home across the UK, with a further 400 plus operating overseas.
Of the 1100 total, 700 of Travel Counsellors’ agents have grown their sales from the previous year in the last 12 months.
Managing director Steve Byrne said: “In the face of some of the most severe circumstances within the industry our individual Travel Counsellors have grown their businesses.
“This is testament to the way in which our agents embrace the support and technology available to them and focus on building invaluable relationships and trust with their customers. We believe that people buy people, not products. We are a people based business and that is what makes us different.”
Travel Counsellors said sales are strong for long haul city destinations such as Dubai and New York, with growth in both the corporate travel and cruising market.
The company’s business travel agents have increased by 9% this year, with an 11% growth in corporate travel sales.
But bookings are down for destinations such as Egypt following the political unrest.
Despite Greece’s uncertain economy the company is still seeing this as a firm holiday favourite for UK travellers.
Over the past 12 months there has also been a late booking trend. During the summer the company saw holidays booked to travel the same or following month had risen by an average of 20%, with consumers remaining keen to take their main holiday of the year abroad, although often for 10 instead of 14 nights.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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