The boss of Gold Medal is looking to increase the operator’s touring brand from a £20 million business to one turning over £50-£100 million.
The Incredible Journeys brand was relaunched about two years ago and has seen rapid growth, according to Gold Medal managing director Simon Applebaum.
“We’ve grown really, really quickly. It’s a £20 million business for us, which is significant, but we think it can be a £50-100 million business,” he told a Travel Weekly webcast.
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Key to the growth plans is helping more agents to become touring and adventure specialists, like the cruise sector has done, he said.
“The challenge to Sarah [Lancashire] in our marketing department and Karen [Fletcher] in our trade partnerships team is to help some people become specialists, especially if you’ve got a cruise audience,” he said.
“The demographics line up so well with touring.
“We want to help agents do more, be more confident promoting that product and more confident taking those enquiries.
“We have done a lot of work educating people on what the product involves, what the itineraries look like, and what small groups are like versus private tours.
“On my social media, touring is underrepresented. We do amazing business for Incredible Journeys but it comes from so many different agents.
“In cruise, it is a smaller set driving a lot more business so it is a chance for some of our customers and some of our agents to really own this space.”
He noted how Incredible Journeys is a member of the Association of Touring and Adventure Suppliers (Atas) and working with the trade body is “key” to helping create specialist agents.
“That’s an important partnership for us [with Atas] as we take Incredible Journeys to the next level, to grow that business that’s really sizable.”