A NEW business run
by ex-DanceXport managing director Mike Bayon is targeting a major sales hike
for the Seligo and Valley Vacations brands.
Bayon set up
Essential Holidays to open up sales channels for accommodation-only specialist
Seligo and sister company Valley Vacations, a flight consolidator and
tailor-made operator to the US, Far East and Australasia.
Under the new
partnership, the brands’ combined portfolio of 800 properties is to increase to
2,500 to appeal to a wider customer base. Self-catering properties will be
targeted to make up 20% of the portfolio.
Other sales
channels will be Teletext, the Internet, call centres and digital TV.
Bayon, who left
DanceXport last month, also plans to run Essential Holidays as an on-line
retailer from January.
This will sell
mainstream packages, accommodation-only and attraction tickets.
It will also
target the youth market, focusing on the Ibiza club scene.
Bayon said: “We’re
in discussion with some clubbing brands and the Ibiza clubs themselves, a lot
of which have their own hotels.”
He helped set up
Seligo’s Ibiza Club-IN Pass, sold as a holiday add-on, and will also sell the
passes on the new site.
Essential Holidays
is in talks with three call centres and two home-working divisions to take
telephone bookings. Accommodation-only and tickets will be bookable on-line.
Bayon has already expressed an interest in buying the majority stake in his
former company, on-line youth agency DanceXport, which holding company Urbanweb
is considering selling.