Spear Travels Group is looking to expand its high street footprint and homeworking network after recruiting former Midcounties Co-operative Travel head of retail Natalie Turner.
Turner will join at the end of October as head of retail operations and will be responsible for day-to-day running of the group alongside former Midcounties colleague Julie Kendrick, who joined Spear Travels in January 2020 as head of commercial and marketing.
The pair will be tasked with growing the business, which currently has 11 high street shops and nine homeworkers.
Group managing director Peter Cookson said it was “always the plan” to expand to about 20 shops but the impact of Brexit and Covid had resulted in a reduction in branch numbers from 13 to 11.
He said: “We certainly hope to have a couple more shops in the next year at a minimum. We are currently in discussions with one agency.”
Cookson stressed there has “never been a better time to be on the high street”, citing a boom in new and returning clients. A quarter of Spear’s business in September was from new customers, many booking with an agent for the first time, while former clients who had not booked for years were returning to branches, he said.
Referring to Turner’s appointment, he added: “To be able to hand over day-to-day operations to such a great team fills me with confidence at a time when the market has picked up and we’ve seen some all-time record months.”
But he admitted the timescale for growth on the high street would “depend entirely on the state of the industry and how many more obstacles are put in the way of our growth”.
Cookson also outlined plans to “at least double” Spear’s network of nine homeworkers by the end of next year.
“This is an area where we see considerable growth potential. We are competitive. There is no limit on numbers,” he said.
“We were the original Abta-bonded homeworker company in the UK in 1993 and at one point we had nearly 100, but we refocused on growing the branches and now it is the time to grow both sides of the business equally.”