SPOTLIGHT YOUR STORIES


KEN GARRITY OWNER,


KEN GARRITY TRAVEL


50 YEARS IN TRAVEL


Long-haul specialist clocks up a half-century in travel – and has no plans to stop anytime soon. Juliet Dennis reports


Ken Garrity loves his job as a travel agent so much he can’t give it up – even after 50 years. The owner of Ken Garrity Travel started out as a trainee at Lewis’s Travel Bureau in Manchester in August 1968, when he was 17. His pay was about £6 a week. “I wanted to work with airlines when I was


young, and the next best thing was travel,” he recalls. “I went for an interview at Lewis’s but when I got there the job had gone. A month later I got a postcard asking me to go back and I got the job. The same day I was stamping brochures.” He’s never looked back. “I took to travel like a duck out of water, I lapped it up. I


didn’t even take coffee breaks,” he jokes. He has fond memories of those early days of clients queueing up to book holidays, then priced in UK guineas. After three years, Ken was made assistant manager of Lewis’s Liverpool branch, before moving to London to become manager of Selfridges Travel in Oxford Street. After seven years at Cresta Travel, he set up his own agency, Carlton Travel, in Sale, Cheshire, in 1981 – a shop he went on to run for 27 years. “I felt I could do the job hands down,” he says. “It was just having the confidence to set it up in the first place.” His shop, a former florist, needed renovation. “People were coming in to book while the


GRASS ACT: Ken has his 2012 Cover Stars


photoshoot onboard Celebrity Silhouette


shop was still full of rubble,” he remembers. The business gained a reputation locally for


organising long-haul trips to Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand. An attempt to downsize the business when


he was 60 didn’t work, he admits. Instead, he set up his own business from


home, Ken Garrity Travel, and he still books clients he’s had for more than 30 years. “I specialise in personal service, long-haul


holidays and cruises,” says Ken, now totally independent and dealing directly with tour operators himself. Now 67, Ken says he still gets a kick out of selling holidays and the “cut and thrust” of the industry.


“I can’t give it up because I love it so much,” KEN’S CAREER HIGHLIGHTS (SO FAR)


✮Flying to Los Angeles on a travel agent fare of £6 in 1970 on one of the first Boeing 747s


✮Flying on Concorde to Cairo for the day on his birthday in 1984 ✮Being voted the best Canada specialist agent in 2010, as well as becoming a ‘gold member’ for New Zealand Tourism, a ‘premier Aussie specialist’ and ‘gold Canada agent’


✮Becoming a Travel Weekly Cover Star in 2012, which meant visiting New York and having his photo taken on a cruise ship


✮Going on trips such as to see the northern lights in Canada, walking the Great Wall of China, travelling on the bullet train in Japan and encountering orangutans in Borneo


CANADA HIGH: Ken shows off his ‘best Canada’ accolade in 2010


he says. “You need to be old to have the experience – I’m aiming for 70,” laughs Ken, who admits he is “never off duty”. When he is not selling travel, he is on fam trips or holidays. He has visited more than 60 countries and been on 12 cruises. And in his spare time he is heavily involved in charity. Only last year he contacted Westoe Travel to set up the Chloe and Liam Appeal with another agent, Jill Waite, of Pole Travel, to collect money for the families of the young travel agent and her boyfriend killed in the Manchester Arena terrorist attack. “I have been doing charity work for 30


years and I felt I had to do something to raise money for the families,” he says. “The travel trade is one big family.”


38 travelweekly.co.uk 23 August 2018


PICTURE: STEVE HOCKSTEIN/HARVARD STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHY


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72