Titan Holidays managing director Jackie Willis is to leave the touring specialist to take up a new role at luxury tour operator Scott Dunn as sales and services director.
Willis, who has been with Titan exactly 10 years, will be succeeded by her ‘number two’, director of product and operations, Andy Squirrell.
Squirrell, who joined Titan in 2003, becomes commercial director in the restructure, a title Willis held for many years while running the business.
She said: “It’s a good stepping stone for Andy to become commercial director first. He’ll get that under his belt and will evolve naturally into managing director, just as I did. But the MD title never changed my day to day role, it was just a formality.”
She added: “We’re very lucky at Titan that we’re a very small, close and experienced team. There’s real expertise throughout and everyone will just move up the ladder and slot into the role above them. My leaving is just a pebble in the pond really.”
Squirrell said the management changes would have no impact on Titan’s relationship with agents.
“There will be no change in our focus on making sure we’re working as well as we can with the trade. Agents are a really strong avenue for us and the trade is completely part of our growth plans,” he said.
Squirrell said Titan, which carries about 40,000 passengers a year, would be looking for growth in revenue next year and to innovate in its product offering.
It already offers 250 tours and 100 cruises worldwide, but said there were certain destinations where Titan could potentially double its business, and other new ones that might appeal to repeat passengers.
“The Far East, Africa, South America and Europe are looking strong and could really grow for us next year. We’ve also launched a couple of totally new destinations for 2016 – Uzbekistan and Columbia – which are selling really well,” he said. “ We have reasons to be very optimistic.”
He added that a decision to merge Titan’s helpdesk with its sales team and get all sales consultants to ‘own’ every stage of a booking instead of passing aspects onto different departments, had produced substantial efficiencies.
Willis said Titan had been treated really well by parent company Saga since it had been bought by the over 50s specialist in 2009.
“It really gave us the opportunity to grow to where we wanted to be,” she said.
But she explained that two years ago, Titan had ‘decentralised’ from the mothership to operate as a stand-alone business again which had accelerated its expansion.
“We were this little cog that was getting a bit lost in the big wheel and we wanted to be able to do things quicker. So we decided to cut out the middle man. We still come together as a group to talk strategy and us owning the silver market, but day-to-day we’re self-sufficient and we’ve reaped the rewards of that,” Willis said.