A Day With... Arundel Travel in Otley

After Arundel Travel opened its doors in the West Yorkshire town of Otley in December 2017, locals quickly associated the brand with Helen Parry (née Arundel), the business’s co-owner, whose 30-plus years in the industry meant she was in high demand whenever clients walked in.

Since the start of the year, however, Helen has been the leader of the travel and tourism course at Leeds City College, meaning her time spent in the shop has been reduced.

“People used to talk about ‘Arundel Travel Helen’, but now it’s ‘Arundel Travel Abbie’ or ‘Arundel Travel Evie’, so the direct association [with Helen] is getting lost for the right reasons,” says Helen’s husband Nick Parry, her fellow director.

 

The couple are supported by five employees, including the aforementioned content creator apprentice Evie Stead and sales executive apprentice Abbie Whitehead, who are kept busy by the shop’s prime position – it can be seen from all roads leading into the town centre.

“The location is brilliant,” says Nick, who recalls drawing up the business plan with Helen while they were on a beach in Portugal. “The finances were all in place. It was just a matter of locating the right premises.”

My visit to the cobbled streets of Otley, on a Thursday morning in mid-June, provides more than enough evidence to justify Nick’s pride in the shop’s location, while also backing the logic in the business’s retail-focused approach.

Treating customers equally

Nick, who used to work in the pharmaceuticals industry, explains that he continues to learn from Helen and the other agents, three of whom are present during my visit.

One of the key abilities he has developed is the particular type of soft skills required by the travel trade.

“In the very early days, a client came in and said they wanted to go to Benidorm. I asked them, ‘What do you want to go there for?’ Helen gave me a stern telling-off and rightly so,” he says.

Illustrating the high standards for customer service, Nick says: “No matter if someone has £300, £1,000 or £20,000 to spend, we treat everyone as if they’ve got £1 million to spend. That is very, very important.”

Some of the most high-value bookings are arranged in the long-haul travel centre, a short
walk away, which opened last year.

 

Libby Paley has become the agency’s long-haul specialist, and the layout of her workspace allows for considerable flexibility when meeting clients’ preferences.

 

“They can sit at the desk, or sit down in the lounge in a more relaxed setting and have a coffee,” she says.

 

The lounge is where one of the office’s standout pieces of kit can be unveiled – a projector, which beams videos and images onto a wall.

 

“It gives us the opportunity to do something a bit different,” Libby says. “Some people like a video playing in the background, but we can also project a full itinerary onto the wall and look at hotels.”

 

Touring holidays are popular, with Japan among the more in-demand destinations, while clients are becoming increasingly diverse, says Libby, citing a customer in her mid-80s, fresh from a trip to China, who is preparing to visit Bhutan. “She’s trying to go as far as she can while she’s still active,” she says.

 

Factors for success

 

As busy as the shop is, Nick reveals the staff are never set individual sales targets. “I don’t like that concept in a shop,” he says. “There is a target for the whole shop and – touch wood – so far we’ve done really well this year.”

 

He measures success on margin, rather than revenue or passenger numbers, he adds, believing the former to be “far more important” than any other metric.

The agency’s proximity to Leeds Bradford airport is regarded as a key factor in the business’s performance, with many customers unwilling to fly from anywhere else.

And, on a related note, Jet2holidays, Helen’s former employer, accounts for a healthy portion of sales.

“We love Jet2holidays and passengers love them. We get great support from Jet2holidays and we’ll continue to give them great support,” says Nick, adding that about 45% of bookings are with the Leeds-based operator.

 

Such is the success the agency has enjoyed over the past eight years, it begs the question as to whether a second store might be on the cards.

 

“Probably not, but never say never,” says Nick. “If we were talking 20 or 30 years ago, then maybe – but probably not now.”