FRONTLINE
Q. Can you tell us about your dad and what you learnt from him?
My dad was the Jet2 of his day – he worked at what was then Intasun and later became International Leisure Group before he retired. He bought Westway Travel after he retired to keep his hand in the industry. What was a hobby for him became a job for me. I learnt a lot from him about doing the right thing, being nice to the clients and the simple ways to do business. But my dad fell out of love with the job quite quickly. He’d gone from buying aircraft at ILG to quoting the price of rail tickets to old ladies going to Bournemouth.
Q. What challenges have you had to overcome as an agency during your time in the industry? I’ve seen the growth of the multiples, Tui wanting to go in-house and British Airways stopping commission payments to agents. We’ve had to overcome these challenges and start selling and promoting different types of holidays. My view is that clever marketing campaigns have now fallen by the wayside and it’s gone full circle; it’s now all about the sales conversation again.
ian prior Westway Travel’s managing director
tells Juliet Dennis about taking over the business from his dad and what it takes to become a thriving high-street agency
Q. How did your career in travel start? I started off at Exchange Travel, a large travel agency group in the south of England. My father bought Westway Travel 44 years ago. He started implementing proper sales techniques, but some of the staff were quite long in the tooth and didn’t like that. One day, he rang me when I was working on the shop floor at Exchange Travel in Basildon and said: “You’re going to have to resign today and work for me at Westway. The staff have all resigned.” I’d been at Exchange Travel for a year or so by then, so I knew how to book a holiday, but Westway Travel is where I learned my trade. I was 18 then, now I’m 62 and the largest shareholder. I’ve taken a step back from the shop floor and spend a lot of time talking to tour operators about product they can offer us and how we can improve conversations with clients. I trust my staff to get on with the job.
22 24 APRIL 2025
Q. How did Covid impact your business? We went into Covid with three branches but lost one of them. The landlord put up the rent of one of the shops by 30% so we shut it, but we didn’t make the staff redundant, we moved them into our existing offices. We became more efficient as a result of the pandemic. We entered Covid with a £10 million turnover between three shops. We’re now running a £9 million turnover business with two shops and we’re more profitable than ever before.
Q. Your agency recently received the top Net Promoter Score in a survey by Aito, The Specialist Travel Association. How did you achieve this? We are a modern-thinking company with old-fashioned values. We are part of the Aito family and work with high-quality operators. We keep our service very simple and we set expectations early in the conversation. It’s like the industry has lost those values and simplicity.
Q. What support do you provide for your clients? We spend about £5,000 a year on printing travel documents, including flight tickets. While I agree with digital processes, I believe our clients need our support with paper copies of itineraries so if they have a problem with their mobile, they have the information to hand. There are times when all of us have bought something and thought ‘that’s not quite right’, so it’s important to set expectations very early in the conversation with the client. I was taught this 45 years ago at college. For example, if clients have a complicated itinerary we would tell them if we’re going to take two days to come back to them. We set expectations of the turnaround time, we get the client’s agreement, but we also spend a lot of time talking to operators about how we can speed up the process.
WHAT IS KEY TO
BEING A SUCCESSFUL INDEPENDENT AGENT?
We employ good
communicators as staff. I took someone on from Tui five months ago, not because of her experience but because she could communicate well with clients. We have a really high percentage of repeat customers and the majority
are 50-plus. When you have someone who has never been into the agency before asking for a brochure, that’s when the quality of conversation – and what you do and don’t say – converts them into a potential customer. Then they will come back and ask for prices and we can get their email to share our expertise in a digital format and reaffirm the conversation in the office. It’s about building up trust,which can be immediate or take six months. Many companies are so eager to take the deposit they forget it’s not that one booking you’re trying to get – it’s a 10 to 20-year
relationship you want. If you do the booking quickly and don’t do the job properly, people may say they are just ‘OK’ with it. I don’t
want clients to say the holiday was just OK – I want them to say it was magical.
Ian in Mexico City
travelweekly.co.uk
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