Cadogan Holidays has revealed plans to expand into cruise, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean after completing a new-look management team bringing in Geoff Lawrence from the Excel Leisure Group.
The capture of Lawrence, who joined the operator on Monday as marketing and sales director, comes after former Panorama Holidays head of marketing John Riley was brought in as commercial and product director last month.
Managing director Tom Allen, who took up the role in February following the sacking of Gary David, said Cadogan now had the team to take the operator forward.
The Mediterranean, Canaries and North African specialist is eyeing expansion in 2007 with talks taking place with a number of cruiselines operating in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Dubai land-stay product is also being looked at, Allen said.
Cadogan is also hoping to increasing its influence in parts of the UK where it has not traditionally focused on, – including Bristol, Manchester and the East Midlands – through sister company GB Airways.
“We want to expand generally throughout the country, expose new areas to our product and grow our base of elite agents,” said Allen who added the recent decision to cut commission by a third to allow prices to be reduced has already had an impact on sales.
“We are still paying reasonably good rates of commission. Now we have got our prices right, we have found our phones are very busy,” he said.
Lawrence said he would be working on improving all distribution channels, including enhancing its agent website to grow online bookings, and adding reservation staff.
“There are clearly large opportunities for us to do more business with the trade. Most of the business is currently phone based, be that travel agent or consumer,” he said.