Barrhead Travel has revealed plans to open a new flagship store in Glasgow after relocating its head office to the city.
The location of the new shop remains under wraps but speaking at the agency’s first annual conference since Covid, president Jacqueline Dobson said it would be in a street with “one of the highest levels of footfall” in the centre of the city.
The store will open in mid-January and will follow next week’s £1 million head office relocation from Oswald Street to Libertas House in St Vincent Place, a grade B listed building which has just been refurbished.
More: Barrhead Travel bullish about 2023 as it reports high levels of new clients
Barrhead Travel now has 51 locations across Scotland, England and northern Ireland, and has opened three new branches in the last 12 months. In the first quarter of 2020, pre-pandemic, it opened 15 new stores at ex-Thomas Cook branches.
Dobson pledged to continue investing in bricks and mortar travel agencies as the company’s “primary focus” and said the firm had a “bold vision” for future growth.
She said: “We will focus on organic growth for the next six months and then we will restart our expansion plans at the back end of 2023.”.
As part of this, the company said it was constantly reviewing its shop locations to ensure stores were best-placed to gain the right level of footfall and planned to relocate stores if necessary.
The agency’s store in Silverburn, Glasgow is to relocate to a better location within the shopping centre, said Dobson.
The company has opened three new stores in the last 12 months, including Halifax, Plymouth and Northwich, and relocated its Dundee store.
She said the company would be “open to opportunities” but has no set target in mind for growth of its branches on the high street. “We want more stores in England but it’s about quality over quantity,” she added.