The royal engagement could not have come at a better time for one Hays Independence Group specialist agency which has just added 77 homeworkers.
Perfect Weddings Abroad now has 82 homeworkers after taking on the business of fellow Hays member Paradise Wedding Planners.
It hopes to cash in on the wedding hysteria sparked by Prince William and Kate Middleton’s nuptials next year.
Managing director Helen Boyle said the engagement was good news for all travel firms selling overseas weddings and honeymoons, despite industry concerns next summer’s ceremony might cause customers to delay their holiday plans.
She said: “It is great to get the media spotlight on weddings and honeymoons. Whenever there is a celebrity wedding it always generates enquiries for the destination in question.”
Ladbrokes is already offering odds of 5/1 that the couple will honeymoon in Kenya and 8/1 for Scotland, where the royal couple met at university.
The Kenya Tourist Board predicted a 10% boost in visitors next year, after the prince proposed during a trip to the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy.
Perfect Weddings Abroad said it would be well-equipped to cope with an uplift in enquiries having taken on Paradise Wedding Planners’ team.
The new team will deal with enquiries from the web and generate their own business at wedding shows. Staff at Perfect Weddings’ head office will continue to deal with trade bookings.
Doyle said: “We’ve invested in search engine optimisation, which means we are now on the first page of Google, so we were planning to expand. This opportunity comes at the perfect time.”
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Picture: Sipa Press / Rex Features