A homeworker is achieving sales of £25,000 a month after setting up his own opera holidays website.
Explorer Travel franchisee consultant Paul Graham set up passionateaboutopera.co.uk around 18 months ago. The site sells opera trips to countries such as Italy after finding the holidays were becoming increasingly popular.
He had previously run an Italian specialist website that was inundated with enquiries about opera breaks.
He said: “It was a little bit of a surprise, there were about 100 pages on the Italian site, but around 90% of the business was for opera, which only had a few pages, so I made the change.
“If you’d told me two years ago that I would be running a classical music business I wouldn’t have believed you.
“I’d been to a couple of operas out of curiosity before setting up the site, but since setting it up I’ve had to learn a lot more and go down to the high street to buy some books and CDs on the subject.
“The repeat business is fantastic from opera fans. They’re not always looking to save a few quid on their holiday but they like to think they’ve got good value.”
Graham said the most popular destinations for opera holidays are Italy, Austria and New York.
He was able to set up the site after joining Explorer Travel which currently has 35 franchisee consultants who are each able to set up and run four fully bookable websites as part of the deal.
Explorer Travel owner Steve Wood said the consultants have around 120 websites between them, although Graham’s is the biggest revenue raiser.
Wood added: “These niche websites run by our franchisees allow them to compete far more effectively with Expedia and lastminute.com as they can enter markets that the big guys don’t bother about.”
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