Harvey World Travel is bidding to become the third big player on the high street as it launches its first major marketing campaign to recruit travel agents for its branches and sister chain Connoisseur.
HWT, now part of the newly created Stella Travel Services Group owned by parent company MFS, has launched trade advertising to boost membership. Currently it has 84 HWT agencies and one Connoisseur branch.
If the recently announced mergers of First Choice and Thomson and Thomas Cook and MyTravel go ahead there will be just two large vertically integrated travel groups.
HWT UK managing director John Donnelly said: “We want to be the third biggest high-street player in terms of turnover. There’s a big opportunity and we aim to fill the gap.”
He claimed the group’s selling points included its buying power as part of a large global company with a turnover of £3 billion a year and operations worldwide including Australia, New Zealand, Dubai, South Africa and the US.
Donnelly, who said 50% of retail sales in the last week were long-haul, also cited its 10% commission deal with Thomson and the tie-up with the Virgin brand for HWT branches.
The group is offering agents three joining options: to be a non-branded independent Connoisseur agent, to be a managed non-branded Connoisseur agent, or to be a managed and branded HWT agent.
There are no joining fees but HWT takes a 5% cut of sales per month for Connoisseur agents, and 1% of HWT monthly sales. The group is targeting 100 Connoisseur agents and has revised its HWT target down to 200-250 in three years.
“We are looking for quality agents who want to change their profile to do more long-haul sales,” said Donnelly. It is hoped many agents who join as Connoisseur branches will ultimately switch across to become HWT agents.