Hays Travel owner Dame Irene Hays says 43% of bookings made by retail staff are from new customers as she played down concerns about “gloomy” economic forecasts.
Speaking at the Hays Travel annual conference in Bodrum on Wednesday, Hays said the business was in a “great position” and did “not have one penny of debt”.
However, she admitted this year had been an “incredibly challenging time” due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine and inflation running at more than 10%.
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Hays said: “You could think that it is a gloomy picture and for some people it is and will continue to be but it’s just not at Hays Travel. It’s not gloomy at all.”
She went on to say “if you look at the analytics, in 2019, 19% of our customers were new, today we have 43%.”
“I think this because of how we looked after people,” she said, adding: “At one point, we had 53% [new customer bookings].”
The business’ two main growth areas were “luxury [holidays] and beach breaks”, she confirmed.
Hays told branch managers the business’ “number one ambition” was to get the balance sheet looking “beautiful” again.
“This will allow us to invest more money in the business and it will give us a war chest,” she explained.
Refurbishing existing shops – including former Thomas Cook premises – is the next on Hays’ to-do list, Hays added.
“Obviously, there’s been no investment in the Thomas Cook shops for quite some time,” she said. “That is going to be an ongoing programme for the next 36 months.”
Although Hays stressed Hays Travel had no desire to be a “big online travel agent”, she admitted plans were in place to upgrade the “particularly tired” Hays Travel website.
Reflecting on the business’s pandemic recovery, she said: “We’re not quite there yet. It has been an incredible challenging time from the prediction that we were going to have a big bounce back in autumn last year. All the way from the devastating headlines that we had from January.”
She said that the past year had been “the most challenging” period since Hays Travel opened in 1980 even pointing out how inflation was 17% that year.
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