Cardiff travel agency Cartwright Travel is thriving. The cruise brand it set up last year, Passion for Cruises, is filling the gap left by the former Gill’s Cruise Centre and footfall to its high street shop is increasing. Owner Steve Cartwright has just taken on a full time travel consultant – his son Luke – and business is on the up.
But just two years ago, the story was very different. Steve was on the verge of shutting down the business he had set up nearly a decade earlier, and had even stopped taking bookings in preparation for its closure.
The burden of a 10-year shop lease, coupled with high rents and rates, were proving too much. Steve had already moved to an office off the high street and sublet his original premises. But when he was let down by his new tenant, the debts began to pile up.
“It was a dark time,” admits Steve. “I was at the point where I couldn’t sustain having my own business; there wasn’t a light at the end of the tunnel.
“It was nothing to do with my agency business – that was slowly growing – but the overheads of the shop premises that I had sublet.”
Ironically, it was as Steve was considering an exit strategy that a local landlord offered him a lifeline. “A guy I had known for a long time asked if I’d be interested in moving back to the high street. He owned the old Gill’s Travel premises. At first
I thought ‘no way’, but he understood my predicament and offered me the shop without rent or rates until my lease was paid off a few months later. It was a no-brainer.”
The offer saved Cartwright Travel from almost certain closure and, in a twist of fate, returned Steve to the premises where he’d started his career as a junior travel consultant for Gill’s Travel in 1978.
The business opened back on the high street in February 2012. Three months later, Steve formed online brand Passion for Cruises with ex-colleague and former director of Gill’s Cruise Centre Steve Philippou. Through advertising and e-shots to the agency’s database, the brand was soon bringing extra footfall and calls to Cartwright Travel.
“There was a massive opportunity for cruise sales, especially in Cardiff,” says Steve, who says support from his consortium Global Travel Group throughout has been invaluable.
Now business is coming from across the UK. Steve says: “People are finding the brand online and business has been pretty phenomenal.”