Family Holidays offers a franchise where the sky’s the limit
If you’re looking for a new franchise, then they don’t come much more glamorous than the travel sector.
Dealing with idyllic sun-kissed tropical islands all day long with the occasional ‘educational free trip’ sounds more like play than work. However, as an owner of one travel company explains, the glamorous perks and financial rewards are there, but only if you work hard.
In 2002, internet entrepreneur, Charles Duncombe, was asked to help a family friend who owned a local travel agent. The high street was stagnating and the friend wanted help getting some internet traffic to his business.
So one morning Charles started to do some website marketing for the business. At lunchtime he received a call from his friend saying: “Charles, whatever you are doing, can you stop. Every time we put the phone down it rings again with another customer enquiry and we can’t get anything done.”
With these green shoots of inspiration, the pair set up www. holidaysplease.co.uk with capital of £6,000. They spent £200 on marketing in the first month and booked £20,000 in holidays in the same period.
15 years later the business sells more than £20 million worth of holidays each year and has over 100 people working for it. The growth is set to continue, as it has already grown by over 25 per cent this year.
During the company’s expansion, it acquired The Family Holidays Company and has now transformed it into a franchise operation, where people with no travel experience can set up their own internet travel agency.
As Charles explains, the rewards can be significant: “The average sale value on good quality holidays is over £4,000, so when you make just 25 bookings you end up booking over £100,000 of business.
“Who doesn’t know 25 friends who might be going on holiday this year?”
In fact, in the UK there are over 30 million family holidays taken each year, with an estimated spend of £13.1 billion. And you only have to take a small part of this to be successful. The company has agents who book well over £100,000 a month.
But while the financial rewards may be there, it still requires hard work.
“You have to work at least three-four days a week to make this a success,” Charles says.
“Customers expect that if they send an email, you need to be able to reply that day or the next day. This isn’t a business where you can take long periods away from it.”
As well as financial rewards, the travel industry offers a lot of personal rewards. When you speak to people in the industry, they will tell you that it’s a fun, exciting and sociable business, where you interact with outward looking, forward thinking, positive people.
Uniquely, you also get to sell something to customers that they enjoy buying and talking about. They even come back and share their experiences and photos with you and on social media.
The perks can be fun as well, with trips paid for by tour operators/tourist boards and discounted industry rates for your own personal family holidays.
And there are awards as well as rewards. In the last few months, the company has picked up the prestigious award of UK & Ireland Online Travel Agency Of The Year to add to its collection of over 20 industry awards over the years.
While many franchises require significant set-up costs, including premises, staff, stock, etc, in travel they are minimal. As long as you have a computer and a phone, you can get started - after the appropriate training, of course.
So if you have a passion for helping people create lifelong memories, while being able to travel the world yourself, a travel franchise may be the perfect option for you.
While family holidays is one of its strongest areas, the company is able to cater for all areas of travel, so feel free to get in touch with them.