After navigating the adversities challenging the travel sector, the CEO of Travel Counsellors sets out why the company is eyeing £1bn turnover and expanding investment into its travel tech platform.
Founded in 1994, the Manchester-headquartered tech-powered travel company “enables and empowers” more than 2,000 independent travel advisors to provide personalised corporate or holiday services to customers.
The company has a dedicated app for its travel counsellors to communicate with customers whether that be to offer travel guidance, itineraries, travel documents or content.
“We expect the business to turnover £1bn in three to four years’ time but it’s all predicated on the brilliant levels of service that the travel counsellors provide, powered and supported by the tech platform that we provide,” Steve Byrne, CEO at Travel Counsellors, told Prolific North.
Byrne, who has been at the helm as CEO since 2016, has had a long stint at the company. Prior to taking up the role as CEO, he spent 12 years as Managing Director.
Equipped with a wealth of experience in the travel sector, prior to joining Travel Counsellors he was CFO and then CEO at International Travel Connections.
Dealing with natural disasters and disruptions that plunge the travel sector into chaos is all part of the job – from tsunamis to volcanic ash clouds – but it was the Coronavirus pandemic, unsurprisingly, that had a transformative impact on the company.
“Within a matter of weeks we went from 15-20% up [sales] to 95% down and that obliterated the income for the company and also for the individual travel counsellors,” he said.
As the world began to slowly shut down, the travel industry was decimated with job and revenue losses across the sector.
“In 2019-20 we were on track to turnover about £650m. Clearly, that was devastated by the pandemic but the business has bounced back really, really quickly. We are on track this year to get that to better than 2019 levels of performance,” he said.
The company might be flying high now with a record £4.5m corporate sales in May alone, but behind the scenes putting a strategy in place was key to building back to profitability.
