Fred Olsen Travel has promoted its head of commercial, Paul Hardwick, to director of retail.
Hardwick will take up the role on April 1 and will be responsible for overseeing all B2C business, shops, franchisees, licensees and homeworkers.
“I want to align all the different parts of the businesses so they can all work smarter,” he told Travel Weekly.
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“As much as the retail shops and franchises have different business models, they’re doing exactly the same thing and have the same skill set so it makes sense to align them.
“I also want to outline what the next three years will look like for the business so we have a plan and something to work towards.”
Hardwick intends to grow the number of retail shops the agency chain has in East Sussex and said it’s all about finding the “right location and the right staff”.
To support his plans, Hardwick said he is looking to restructure his team and recruit some additional staff members.
“We are back to where we were pre-pandemic in terms of staff numbers and now we want to bring on some extra key people to the commercial side of the business,” he said.
Hardwick went on to say one particular area he wants to focus on is river cruise and he hopes to return to pre-pandemic sales numbers as soon as possible.
“In 2017 we did half a million river cruise sales, the following year we did 1 million and the year after 1.8 million so we were growing steadily prior to the pandemic,” he said.
“Obviously it then took a dip and last year we got back to the 1 million mark, but we need to build that back to the levels we were at four years ago.”