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Former Spear Travels managing director reflects on 32 years with agency
Peter Cookson tells Juliet Dennis he will ’miss the industry hugely’ after completing ’emotional’ Hays Travel sale
When the former managing director or The Spear Travels Group Peter Cookson told staff about the company’s sale to Hays Travel, he had to switch off his computer screen to keep his composure.
After 32 years at the agency, directors Peter and Libby Cookson and Derek Adams have all left the business this week as part of the sale agreement.
Cookson said breaking the news to staff across the agency’s 12 branches in Teesside, the Midlands, Essex and Oxfordshire, as well as its 12 homeworkers was difficult.
He said: “It was quite emotional. We did a Zoom call for all the staff across the whole company and I had to give a speech. I was dreading it. I turned my screen off to do it but my wife Libby said there were lots of weeping faces.”
Cookson, 72, admitted there was anxiety among staff hearing the news.
“It’s very hard in situations like this, it makes people feel slightly on edge, no matter how much reassurance you give staff. But Hays have made it clear all jobs are safe,” he said, adding: “We have had amazing feedback from staff and from tour operators.
"We’ve had loads of messages saying we are the best company they have ever worked for.”
Cookson is also optimistic about the future for the company and its brand names on the high street following its sale to the largest independent high street agency chain.
He noted: “We wanted to sell to the right people and it was important to us to protect the brand and the staff; we have done that.
“I think Hays Travel has every intention to keep the brands. After Miles Morgan Travel’s acquisition I think they have seen the benefits of retaining the brand. If a trading name changes it does change people’s perspective and Hays recognise that.
“They also want to learn from us because we are so strong on long-haul tailormade holidays, cruise and tours.”
On a personal level, leaving the company after such a long time was never going to be easy for Cookson, who revealed the sale had been “on the cards” for a few months once the directors had decided it was time to retire.
More: Hays targets further multi-channel growth after Spear Travels deal
The directors have all been with the company longer than the longest-serving staff of 27 years.
They all started as homeworkers with the agency, with Adams joining in 1993 and the Cooksons in 1994. The company was the first Abta-bonded homeworking network in the UK “bar none”, said Cookson.
“They had 90 homeworkers when we first joined in the 1990s,” he recalled. “It was very successful.”
The company was set up a decade earlier in 1983 by cab drivers Howard Scharvona and Peter Mendel, trading as Spear Travels under parent company Jetclub. It was a one-branch agency before expanding into homeworking in the early 1990s.
“They just wanted to get into travel and started the business in Harrow in Middlesex and then moved the agency to Upminister,” said Cookson.
The success of the Cooksons’ homeworking business led to their decision to branch out on to the high street in Boroughbridge in 1996 under the Spear Travels name.
“We had outgrown our home and we were fed up with working long hours with young children. We continued on a homeworker basis in the shop but then switched to become salaried employees of Spear Travels,” he said.
Another Spear Travels branch followed in 1997 in Stoke on Trent, opened by Adams, and in 2005, the Cooksons and Adams were made directors of Jetclub. They went on to buy the business equally between them in 2007 when Scharvona and Mendel retired.
The focus shifted from homeworking to the high street, with a strategy to open branches in affluent market towns across the UK. Agency acquisitions followed and by 2015 it boasted 11 shops.
In 2016, it bought Broads Travel Group, which included a business travel centre, and in 2019 closed its Leyburn branch, moving staff to its Northallerton branch.
After surviving Covid, Spear Travels bought its 12th shop, one-branch agency Regent Travel in Staffordshire, in 2023, which included tour operation Regent Tours. At the time Cookson said it was "great to be back on the acquisition trail” after the “difficult Covid years”.
Both the Broads Travel and Regents Travel brands have been kept on and the company’s most recent acquisition was in 2024 when it took over the forward bookings and database, but not the shop, of Strachan Travel in Thornton Cleveleys, near Blackpool.
Cookson, who until the company’s acquisition by Hays earlier this week was still overseeing cash flow every day, said the couple would now “take some time off”.
Wife Libby, who moved away from the business 10 years ago, told how she was “just really proud” of the business the directors had built, while Cookson said the feedback from the industry to wish them well had been heartening.
Reflecting on their career in travel, he added: “We have had fun; we’ve enjoyed it. Travel is a big family at the end of the day and it’s very a tight knit community. We will miss the industry hugely.”
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