p18 Cruise July10 7/7/09 16:18 Page 18
Cruise
Lee Hayhurst
020 7921 8001
lhayhurst@ttglive.com
For the latest cruise news, visit ttglive.com/cruise
“We want to give
our team better
working facilities,
so it is better for
them and better
for business”
As well as the extra space the new office
boasts a staff canteen, large training rooms,
state of the art technology, a games room with
pool tables, table tennis and table football, and
even a decked rooftop area and a croquet lawn.
Beadles expects this to boost morale and en-
courage communication between departments,
so increasing efficiency and helping to retain and
attract the best staff.
“We are very happy with the team we have and
we want to offer them better facilities in antici-
pation it will be better for them and for business.”
Stepping up: Reader Offers managing director Peter Beadles (left), company secretary Pat Beadles and sales and Beadles admitted the decision to refurbish
marketing director Jeremy Dickenson outside the cruise agency’s new, larger, Colchester headquarters Lexden House, a former manor house, was not
an easy one given the current economic outlook.
Reader Offers in
But he said Reader Offers’ performance had given
him the confidence it was the right thing to do.
“We knew two years ago we were running out
of space,” he said. “But then we had the problem
move to £4m HQ
of the looming recession and last summer I put
off the decision until the autumn on the grounds
I needed to see where the business was going.
“If it slumped totally we would not have
moved. We had the option of renting more space,
The UK’s oldest recorded town now has its newest cruise which was not ideal, but as we were not having a
travel agency headquarters. Lee Hayhurst is shown around
bad year we decided to take the plunge.”
Reader Offers’ new ex-manor house premises in Colchester
Beadles said Reader Offers’ end-of-year
figures to April were below target but, despite
the sharp economic downturn from September,
THERE CAN’T be many independent travel agen- work in an office offering 10 times the floor were ahead of last year.
cies prepared to splash out £4 million on a new space they currently have. “Trade to the end of September was better
headquarters in these difficult economic times. Between them, Reader Offers’ reservations than from September to April,” he said.
But Colchester-based Reader Offers has done and post-booking customer service teams “But having said that in the first four months
just that and last month started moving staff take up to 900 calls a day, so having the best of this year we did better than in the first four
into its swish new base at Lexden House on the technology at their fingertips to help answer months of the previous year.”
outskirts of the town. every conceivable question is vital. Beadles intends to step down as managing
The move illustrates how far cruise has come In the year to the end of April the company, director this August making way for
in recent years and the firm’s managing director, which advertises extensively in the national Jeremy Dickenson, the cur-
Peter Beadles, believes the investment will pay off. press, made close to £100 million in sales. rent sales and marketing
For over a decade Reader Offers has been run Beadles said any cruise line that director.
from cramped offices in the centre of town, and wanted to take his business off He will bequeath a
has grown from occupying two attic rooms to him would have to employ at least growing business with
two entire adjacent buildings. 100 people to replicate the high plenty of scope to grow
From this month, when the move is due to be levels of customer service the further into its impressive
completed, Reader Offers’ 100 staff will come to agency prides itself on. new home.
18 10.07.2009
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