Virgin Holidays plans to launch its brand in the US next year and then continue expanding internationally by moving into other markets including Australia and South Africa.
Speaking exclusively to Travel Weekly, managing director Amanda Wills revealed she was looking at opportunities to grow organically, and also scouting for businesses to acquire to give Virgin Holidays immediate scale.
“I started here 10 years ago and it was just Virgin Holidays,” she said. “Now we’re a multi-brand, multi-channelled business and in the future we will continue with what we are doing well here in the UK, but I also want to look at doing what we do overseas.”
She said she was confident it would be easy to launch in new markets because the Virgin brand was so well known due to the airline and other products in the Virgin empire, such as the gym brand Virgin Active.
Wills added: “We’ve got people out there now looking to see what we can do organically or where we’d need to take something on. They are seeing what’s available. But if we do this, we’d go big, so we will need to acquire.”
Wills said Virgin Holidays, which posted profits of £23.5 million last year and expects to surpass that in 2010-11, already has a small inbound tourism business called Virgin Vacations, serving visitors from the US to the UK. This, she said, could be scaled up as part of the company’s expansion plans.
“We are hoping to launch [in the US] sometime next year. Our plan will be ready in June-July,” she said.
Back home, Wills revealed she was also looking to grow Virgin Holidays’ cruise business by acquiring another cruise specialist retailer.
The group bought Fasttrack Cruises three years ago and has increased its sales from 6,000 bookings a year to 60,000, mostly by persuading existing Virgin Holidays land-based customers to try cruise for the first time.
“Virgin Cruises has seen phenomenal growth,” Wills added.
“It’s all about being able to stand out from other cruise retailers. This is harder for ex-UK sailings, as you can only do things like chauffeured luggage etc. But with fly-cruises, we can add Virgin Atlantic flights, the V-Room, our own people, the brand itself – we can offer what many others can’t.”
Wills claimed Virgin Cruises was selling “huge amounts” of dynamically packaged cruises for Florida and the Caribbean, and predicted this business would grow.
“We will add to what we have got by the acquisition of another cruise retailer. We are talking to a number of people at the moment,” she added.
Wills also revealed plans to extend the hugely successful ‘Hip Hotels’ to its cruise businesses, launching a Hip Cruises or Cool Cruises programme and brochure. And she said there was “more on the cards” in terms of product differentiation to follow soon.
Asked if Virgin Holidays would ever consider offering short-haul holidays again, Wills said: “If we ever did short-haul, it would only ever be scheduled short-haul. There’s just no point with anything else. But it’s not in our immediate plans.”