NEWS THE INTERVIEW
so many holidays. In fact, we’re still short of travel agents in the shops. We have about 400 vacancies across the country, which is really significant. In addition to that, we have 450 apprenticeship places and we’re still recruiting for that. To take on 450 in a pandemic is quite something, but we’re on the way. We have vacancies in head office too, so it’s been a challenge. We’re still using furlough in some areas where the business is not back; for example, foreign exchange. So, selectively, we’re using furlough, but nowhere near where we were in June and July. We’re not looking at any redundancies at all. We need to see what happens. You can never say never but we’ve managed to hold on to the vast majority of our staff. We couldn’t provide customer care and have furlough. We multi-skill staff to work on different parts of the business and new businesses that we moved into [such as helplines for sporting and entertainment outlets] and we’ve expanded those parts of the business. We’ll carry on doing other work – nowhere near where we were in 2020, but we have diversified.”
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Dame Irene on . . . the loss of talent from travel: “People have moved into other industries, become pregnant, decided travel’s not for them. Some have enjoyed working from home. So there’s a whole range of reasons why we have so many vacancies. I’m hearing the same from colleagues, Independence Group members and other people in the industry. It’s a national problem. So we’re going back to traditional forms of advertising and using social platforms. We’re recruiting steadily, but 400 vacancies is a lot, which is why we’re so committed to apprenticeships. Our training and development team is award-winning. If we continue to have this problem, we might consider a second intake of apprentices.”
Dame Irene on . . . Hays’ new franchisee model: “We soft-launched the franchisee model in July, but we’ve been really pleased with the response. A lot of smaller retailers want to stay in travel but need the confidence of a bigger organisation and the advantages that
brings in terms of commercial deals, primarily. We always focus on profit for the person running the business so we’ve got a clear structure. We also help with technology, training, marketing and advice on property. So if people have already got a small business, it’s a great opportunity to look at a different model. We’ll help them to be the best they can in what are challenging times. These people have great businesses, and great people, but they need a slightly larger team. We’ve got 500 people here, who look after them and hopefully build them back for the future.”
Dame Irene on . . . acquisitions: “We’re still getting lots of approaches from companies that are struggling, and it’s really sad. If anybody is kind enough to approach us, we look at it. We’ve got a couple of things we might move forward on, but might not.”
Dame Irene on . . . the future of the high street: “We still see a future in the high street and we still see digital and virtual developing at the same time.
That’s been the case for a long time but the pandemic might have slowed down online a little. It would be naive to think it’s not going to continue to grow, so we’ll continue to watch how they both develop. At the moment, we’re committed to the high street. If it wasn’t working, we would respond.”
Dame Irene on . . . what the late John Hays would have made of the industry now: “He’d be saddened by the impact on the number of great people and great businesses and the decisions they’ve had to make. He always paid tribute to our competitors and talked about the things they were doing better than us. We still do that. And I hope he’d be pleased at the way his fantastic team has risen to the challenge because it’s been nothing short of extraordinary.”
Watch the webcast with Irene Hays in full:
go.travelweekly.co.uk/webcasts
2 SEPTEMBER 2021
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