FRONTLINE
of Thailand to Hat Yai. We then island-hopped a bit and thought it was amazing. So, for the next couple of years I worked for six months in Thailand and six months in Padstow, Cornwall. My mate had based himself in Koh Phangan and I was in Koh Samui, so I went over to see him and he had a little office where he was renting out motorbikes. We realised there was an opportunity to have a travel agency looking after travellers, helping them with buses, trains and ferries as they went on to their next place. Our telephone was the only one for 5km in any direction – it cost £2,500 to buy and install and we had a 50-foot aerial on the roof to get the signal – and there was a room that served as my bedroom.
Q. What did you do when you returned to the UK? I wanted to get a job using my specialist knowledge, so I joined Travelbag in Piccadilly in London. I was a Far East specialist, working with them from 1999 until 2003. I got married to a Thai in 2001 and we were married for 25 years, so I became immersed in the Chanthaburi community. I experienced a lot of cultural things that most travellers will never see and most travel agents don’t know anything about because they’ve not lived that life.
GRANT WILLS
The Travel Counsellors agent and Thailand expert talks to
Andrew McQuarrie about his destination knowledge and an unexpected celebrity booking
Q. What is the focus of your business? I sell worldwide destinations, including cruises, but Thailand is my area of expertise. I tend to sell a lot of multi-destination holidays to Thailand, covering pretty much the whole country. Obviously, there are some places that are better known than others, but because I’ve spent a lot of time off the tourist trail, I do send clients to destinations that a lot of people may not have heard of. However, it really depends on what people are looking for. I book a lot of premium leisure trips for couples.
Q. How did you get into travel?
I went to college to study business and finance, before going to Australia with a friend. We didn’t plan anything and just turned up in Sydney, expecting to stay there for about six months. People were saying, ‘Oh, where did you go on the way here?’ And we said, ‘We didn’t go anywhere. We just came straight to Australia.’ They recommended Thailand, so we ended up flying to Singapore and travelling through Malaysia into the south
22 9 JULY 2026
Q. You joined Travel Counsellors in 2005. How did you mark your 20th anniversary last year? I attended a company lunch in Manchester for long servers, plus there was a bit of a celebration in Sri Lanka when I was there in October with fellow Travel Counsellors agents. They arranged a little surprise for me and one of the guys gave a short speech. There’s a video of it on my webpage.
Q. What’s the most memorable booking you’ve ever made? There’s one booking that I always think about. A couple were going on a £12,000 honeymoon for five or six weeks, flying out via Hong Kong and going to Australia, Fiji and New Zealand before flying back via the US. It took months to put this holiday together. On the Saturday, the day before their flight, I was watching the news and it was saying there would potentially be snow on Sunday. So I was thinking, ‘Oh, God.’ I got up early on the Sunday morning and there was loads of snow, with Heathrow badly affected. I checked the clients’ flights and the BA flight from Heathrow out to Hong Kong had been cancelled. But there was one other flight with BA going that day and it had two seats left, so I managed to get those last two seats. I had to get hold of the clients and tell them they would now be leaving earlier than planned, so I phoned their home number but there was no answer. I phoned their mobile and it just went straight to voicemail. So I then phoned the client’s dad, because he’s my customer as well. His daughter was standing next to him and she said, ‘Is it cancelled?’ I said, ‘Well, it was, but we’ve got you on the last two seats on this other flight.’ They were delighted.
COULD YOU TELL
US ABOUT THE TIME YOU BOOKED A CELEBRITY CLIENT?
I once booked Sigourney Weaver’s flights when she
appeared in Doc Martin. I was in my office and took a phone call from a young lady who said, ‘We need two one-way business-class seats to JFK.’ I thought it sounded dodgy and asked how she got my number. She said they phoned my head office and I was the closest agent to their location. So I started taking this enquiry and it was for a woman called Susan Weaver, travelling with a man called Jim. I was doing all the quotes for the flights, and had to send them to something like productionassistant@
docmartin.com. When I asked if she could send me the passport details for the booking, she said she wasn’t sure if she could. So I said, ‘You’ll need to enter them yourself then.’ Later, I was on
the school run in Wadebridge, Cornwall, where I live, and
heard an announcement on the radio saying Hollywood stars had been spotted on the set of Doc Martin. I rushed back to the office and looked up Sigourney Weaver on Google. It brought up the Wikipedia page, which said ‘Sigourney Weaver, or Susan Weaver’.
‘Susan
Weaver’ on the red carpet
travelweekly.co.uk
PICTURE: Shutterstock/Jaguar PS
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