InteleTravel president James Ferrara has hailed “very motivated” agents in the UK and Ireland for contributing to a 50% boost in year-on-year sales revenue.
During the homeworking franchise’s annual conference, it was revealed that this year’s gross turnover figure for the UK and Ireland is £95m and the average transaction value is £1,500.
Ferrara told Travel Weekly he is “thrilled” about the figures, adding: “I see the UK agents as very productive and hungry to succeed – they’re very motivated.”
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He added that he expects InteleTravel’s total sales to reach the billion-dollar mark by the first quarter of 2024, in line with previous announcements.
In the UK and Ireland, he would like to see a 30% uplift in turnover recorded in 2024. This would bring the figure to around £125m.
But Ferrara believes the business can carry on expanding, having grown rapidly since arriving in the UK five years ago.
He said: “In the UK we’re just going to keep on growing in a managed and responsible way.
“The growth is exponential, so I can easily see us achieving the kind of numbers in the UK that we’ve seen in the US.
“We’ve been in the US for 33 years, but we could achieve those numbers in the UK in 10 years of being here.”
InteleTravel has reported having around 16,500 agents in the UK, but Ferrara said the rising number of agents is “not the important number”.
“The important number is the travel sales,” said Ferrara. “We’ve only grown the number of agents by about 10% in the last year, but we’ve grown the gross turnover by 50%.”
He added: “The company has grown far beyond any projections I had when we were first planning to set it up.
“My original projection was we would have a maximum of 5,000 agents, so we’ve more than tripled that.”
Giving an update on the company’s planned acquisition of a tour operator, Ferrara suggested that the transaction is nearing completion.
He said: “The tour operator acquisition is preparing to close and we’ll have an announcement about that before the end of the year.”
He added that InteleTravel has also been pressing ahead with plans to expand into the EU, starting in Germany.
“We’re deep into negotiations and we expect to have an announcement pretty soon about that,” he told Travel Weekly.