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Award winning Travel Agency
Claire Willoughby receives Proprietor of the Year award at glittering London ceremony
Claire Willoughby, founder and managing director of Barnsley travel firm Holidays First, walked away with the prestigious ‘TIPTO Proprietor of the Year’ award in the 2010 Agent Achievements Awards, which were held at the Lancaster London Hotel on Thursday 22 April.
The TIPTO (Truly Independent Professional Travel Organisation) award is highly regarded throughout the travel industry as it is the result of receiving the highest number of nominations from peers at leading tour operators.
The award follows hot on the heels of Holidays First making it through to the finals of Travel Weekly’s Agent Excellence Awards for being one of the UK’s most innovative travel agencies, and comes only a year after the company was launched.
Claire, a former director of Apollo Travel and Head of Direct for The Co-operative Travel, launched Holidays First at Dodworth Business Park in April last year; and since then the company has become one of the fastest growing travel brands in the north of England.
Commenting on her accolade, Claire said: ‘’This caps off a brilliant twelve months for me. It’s certainly been hard work - and continues to be so as the travel industry faces many challenges and knock-backs, such as the recent airspace crisis. But I’ve got plenty of Yorkshire grit and I’m determined to make Holidays First one of the best names in travel. I’m also lucky to have some of the best staff in the world!’’
This year’s Agent Achievement Awards ceremony was attended by over 500 of the UK’s leading leisure travel agents, including multiples and independents, making it one of the biggest travel events of the year.
Barnsley travel agency Holidays First reached the finals of the prestigious Travel Weekly Globe Travel Awards for 2010, which were held at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel on Tuesday 19 January.
Holidays First’s nomination in the Agent Excellence Awards category for ‘The Most Innovative Agency’ resulted in the Barnsley team making it through to the final six contenders from 100s of entrants nationwide.
This is a tremendous achievement considering the agency was competing for one of only four awards being presented to travel agents on the night from a total haul of 47 prizes. And as the only finalist from Yorkshire, the Barnsley firm was only too pleased to be flying the flag for the county.
Commenting on the accolade for her new agency, Claire says, ‘The start we’ve made is very encouraging, and I feel the main reason for this is our commitment to innovation – and, especially, an appreciation of how it helps us to provide our clients with a truly personal service and the best possible prices on the widest range of holiday options and leisure pursuits. We are naturally over the moon that our efforts have been recognised at the Globe Travel Awards ceremony.’
Innovation in communication is the key to success
The delivery of outstanding levels of innovative customer service lie at the heart of Holidays First, and this philosophy led the firm to invest in a cutting edge customer relationship management system to help the agency keep its promises, extend its reach with smart communications - and thereby maximise sales opportunities.
After considering a wide range of CRM options, Holidays First decided to enlist software development specialists DataConsulting to create a secure web-based system called Rapport.
Built on DataConsulting’s data analysis and mining expertise, Rapport CRM allows Holidays First to keep close to its customers by identifying problems, driving marketing campaigns and increasing customer loyalty and retention.
Taking daily feeds from enquiry and booking systems, Rapport CRM accumulates the data and produces priceless intelligence to keep Holidays First close to its clients and fully informed of their needs. Functions include revenue statistics, targeted e-mail communications to thank customers and offer them relevant products, online questionnaires to gather vital information and market intelligence, and advanced reporting and customer segmentation.
