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Your Holiday Booking moves to Midcounties
Lee Hayhurst
lee.hayhurst@travelweekly.co.uk
Vertical Group’s homeworking agency Your Holiday Booking has given notice of its intention to leave Thomas Cook-owned Freedom Travel Group to join The Midcounties Co-operative.
The move, which is expected
to be completed this year, was communicated to Your Holiday Booking’s 48 homeworkers in the past week. It represents a strengthening of ties between the companies, which announced a joint venture in June, creating Co-op Rooms and in-house tour operation Co-op Holidays. Peter Healey, the owner of
Vertical, which will continue to supply technology to Freedom, said the switch opened up opportunities including entering overseas markets. Healey and Vertical will be
reunited with former partners from The Co-operative Travel
including Midcounties group general manager Alistair Rowland. Healey said: “We are moving for
practical reasons to do with my relationship with the Co-op and my past success with the Co-op. It has been a strong partner for me. “I’ve been happy with the work of
Kelly [Cookes, head of Freedom and The Co-operative Personal Travel Advisors] and this is not out of any sense of negativity with Freedom. “It gives us more flexibility
about how we sell our stock, internationalising our processes and dealing with more overseas clients.” With a turnover of about
£25 million, Your Holiday Booking will become Midcounties’ largest consortium member. Rowland said: “Peter’s business is one of the UK’s most mature and well-run homeworking businesses.” Cookes said: “We part on amicable terms. We continue to grow as a business and our focus will be to support our members with any product they want to sell.”
Peter Healey: ‘It gives us
more flexibility about how we sell our stock’
Travel faces skills shortage by 2023
Phil Davies Travel Convention 2015, Greece
The travel and tourism sector faces a “demographic time bomb” with a potential lack of skilled workers from 2023, industry leaders have been warned.
Speaking at a Travel Weekly Business Breakfast at Abta’s Travel Convention in Greece, Monarch Group chief executive Andrew Swaffield said a skills shortage was a “massive political issue that no one is talking about”. He was on a panel that urged the industry to encourage more school-leavers to consider a career in travel against a backdrop of the government consulting on its Trailblazer scheme, which aims to deliver three million apprenticeships by 2020. Swaffield also highlighted the
need to encourage more women back to work following maternity leave, in addition to promoting the diverse range of job opportunities in the sector. He warned that the UK would
run out of skilled workers in 2023, which would lead to a recession. Abta was suggested as a potential body to represent the industry in
“Travel and tourism should be aspirational for school-leavers, rather than something people just fall into”
boosting opportunities in travel, but Travel 2 and Gold Medal managing director Andy Freeth questioned whether the association could represent the needs of such a diverse sector as travel and tourism. Midcounties Co-operative Travel
group general manager Alistair Rowland, an Abta board member, admitted that a skills gap existed in travel retailing and said: “Travel and tourism should be aspirational for school-leavers, rather than something people just fall into.” Jo Rzymowska, Celebrity Cruises’ UK and Ireland managing director, called on the sector to do more to prompt young people to consider travel as a career as well as supporting older workers with
more flexible arrangements. l For full coverage of The Travel Convention, including the launch of Travel Weekly’s careers magazine, Take Off in Travel, see next week’s edition.
15 October 2015
travelweekly.co.uk 5 3 STORIES HOT
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