Your Stories: Just Ask Travel's Greig Horabin on shifting to the luxury market

Q. What made you decide to set up your own travel business?
I started Just Ask Travel with my business partner John Falcon about eight years ago. I have fish and chip shops in Fleetwood and in Cleveleys, Lancashire, which are our main businesses, and we started this as a sideline because I’m very lucky to be well travelled and it was something that I enjoyed doing.

Without being big-headed, I felt I could do the job better than anybody else and wanted to bring something to the marketplace where it was human. I have dyslexia, so even as an agent now, I don’t book anything online. We communicate with clients by phone or face to face and only use email for documentation.

Q. How has the travel agency changed since you first launched it?
From its infancy, we were booking mostly local with a few family members and friends. In our first year, we did 232 bookings and turned over nearly £350,000. My business partner and I realised something had to change for us to be able to make a mark-up and service a client properly. You don’t want to be a busy fool – by price-matching online, you’re working for nothing. We elevated our marketplace, and our average booking value is now £13,000. Last year, we did 49 bookings and turned over just short of £700,000.

Q. How do you find your clients?
It’s mainly recommendations now – we get chains of people passing on our details. For example, we booked a £49,000 Silversea cruise for one client, who then recommended us to a friend, who booked a £25,000 trip to Barbados and a £12,000 trip to Miami with business-class flights and a cruise, who then passed my details on to someone in the villa next door, who bought a £25,000 Dubai trip and a £23,500 cruise. All I do is just talk to them as a normal person. I eff and jeff, I keep my pencil sharp and I am very honest with them. New clients come through reputation and social media. We splash our own trips all over social media and our Just Ask Travel page, which my wife runs, which sends a clear message about what we do, so it warns people off wanting something we don’t provide.

Q. What else helps you attract loyal customers? 
John and I have the most beautiful handmade, etched wooden business cards that float, and we have got quite a few bookings from those when we are on holiday ourselves. I always have a supply and, wherever we go, I show off my wares. It’s amazing what you get by having a good business card. Everybody else hands over a paper one, so they’ll never forget us.

Q. What are the most popular destinations you sell?
We only sell what we know and, in general, where we’ve been. The Maldives is our top-selling destination, closely followed by Dubai and Thailand. High-end cruising and New York and Las Vegas also do well.

Q. How do you make your clients’ trips special?
We always send a gift to the client to thank them for the booking, whether it’s chocolates, a bottle of fizz or something destination-themed. I had a booking for four people going away to Vietnam and I sourced some Vietnamese beer and bunches of Vietnamese flowers. We’ve also treated people to nights away and dinners in fine restaurants. A guy booked a big Florida trip for eight people, and I said: “Here’s a £400 budget – please go out to dinner on us.”

Q. What’s been your favourite trip to date?
The most mind-blowing fam trip was visiting Joali Maldives. It was exemplary; truly fantastic and the highest level out there. I’ve done a few fam trips – 
one with Travelpack to the Maldives and Goa, one to Thailand with Gold Medal and another high-end cruise. But for family holidays, it’s a toss-up between the first time we went to the Maldives and our trip all around Thailand.

Tell us about the rest of the team

I met my business partner John Falcon in 1996 when he was my boss at Currys. We went our separate ways workwise, but we always kept in touch as good mates and I went to him with the idea of the travel franchise. We’ve travelled all over the world together and run a business together, and never had one cross word.

Outside of that, a young lady called Samantha Morrison from Pure Luxury works with me around the clock. Our agency has a relatively small turnover, but I’m very loyal to the brand. They have given us a full support team to do what we do best, which is sell luxury holidays. Samantha knows it’s worth putting the time in because I don’t mess her about. She even came to my wedding last year, and I speak to her more than I do my wife.

We have mutual trust and she will go above and beyond to make sure I can do my job, which is a big part of what makes the symbiotic relationship work so well. We have done more than £2 million in bookings since we started in 2020, and I would say about 90% of that is with Samantha.