Advantage Travel Partnership has reported a profit for its most recent financial year, thanks to the easing of Covid restrictions and investments in its services and staff.
The consortium reported a net profit before tax for the year of £619,815 (2021: loss before tax of £327,229) from continuing operations. Its results cover the period from October 1, 2021, to September 30, 2022.
Its transactional turnover soared to more than £88 million (2021: £12.7 million) while its statutory turnover increased to £21.5 million (2021: £5.7 million).
Total global sales turnover across the membership grew to £12.5 billion, with £4.5 billion representing sales turnover from UK members – £3 billion from business travel and £1.5 billion leisure.
It said this “strong set” of financial results were driven by a strategy “focused on building back the business and its balance sheet following two years of pandemic impact and making further investments into its core membership services and its people”.
Steven Esom, Advantage Travel Partnership chairman, said: “This was a year when worldwide governments started to remove travel restrictions, almost immediately triggering a much-anticipated pent-up demand for travel. Whilst this was positive news for the sector, it brought with it further challenges as the industry grappled with the reopening of international travel.
“Against this backdrop our members weathered this storm well by managing their customers’ travel plans as best they could to help minimise disruption and be on hand to guide and support them.”
He said 137 branches joined the network, while the group is recognised as the second largest travel management company (TMC) network in Europe.
The Advantage Global Network now has 96 members in 83 countries.
Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive at Advantage Travel Partnership, added: “We invested in a robust structure to support our ambitious growth agenda and made a number of promotions and key appointments to the senior leadership team during the year, including the appointment of Guy Snelgar to the newly created position of global business travel director and Xian Mayes to the position of chief of people.
“Driven by chief commercial officer Kelly Cookes, working alongside Paul Nunn, our chief operating officer and regulatory expert, the partnership’s unique structure enables us to continue leveraging our buying scale across all our operating models, to maximise the best return for our members.”
She highlighted how the consortium had continued to raise its profile across business, government and the media, and created a public affairs and lobbying arm to champion the UK outbound travel sector.
“In doing so, Advantage has maintained its position as the leading voice for outbound travel with government and policymakers and created greater visibility and recognition for all travel agents operating in the UK outbound travel sector,” she said.
“We also continued to strengthen our member steering groups. These working groups, on which we have members representing all key areas of our business, mean we remain laser-focused on what is important to members.”