Midcounties Co-operative Travel Consortium has welcomed six new members and reported a 14% increase in sales year on year.
Annual turnover for the group was £135 million in 2016, while the total number of members now stands at 54.
The new members include: Aquilium, Elsol Travel, Cruise2 and Destinationski. Existing members World Travel Lounge and Pure Travel have each opened second shops.
Three more member applications are currently being processed.
Head of consortium Alison Holmes (pictured) updated members today (Friday) at the group’s annual conference being held Kipriotis Village Resort in Kos, Greece, sponsored by Thomas Cook.
She said the main reason for the sales growth was down to members which joined last year becoming established and existing agents expanding their business.
However, Holmes said discounting was up slightly compared to last year from 2% to 2.4% which she put down to an increase in package holidays and competing with some suppliers’ direct-sell websites.
The consortium has refreshed its B2B website featuring videos and testimonials to attract new members which will be finalised in the next two weeks.
Training webinars used by the Midcounties Co-operative Travel retail network will also be made available to members from November.
A new digital marketing suite will go live early next year, containing point of sale material and downloadable PDFs.