Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, and the most special of guests.

The, I guess, royalty of travel in the UK, none other than Dame Irene Hayes of Hayes Travel.

I'm talking to Irene at the Abta Convention in Bodrum and this isn't your

first Abta Convention is it? No it isn't Simon it's my 37th I think I did actually have two

years off to have children but Hayes Travel's been around since 1980 so we're 43 43 years old, so yes, I've been here before.

Just to paint a picture of what Hayes Travel actually is, small independent travel agent based in Sunderland,

which has suddenly become, well, the largest independent travel agent in the UK and indeed the

largest chain of travel agents in the UK what's going on there well I think

there is no magic since we started the company with one shop in 1980 we've

continued to grow both organically opening shops which were previously butchers or hairdressers,

but we've also acquired other travel agencies, probably most notable in October of 2019, when you may recall that we acquired all of the Thomas Cook estate and 3,000 of the lovely staff who worked for Thomas Cook at that time

and unfortunately lost their jobs when Thomas Cook failed. So since then and since we've come out with

the pandemic, I've bought six more companies as well as recently as three weeks ago so that's why we are

the largest independent travel agent on the high street but we're still just a family company

we're still just the same family company and the same family culture those Thomas cook stores

well of course within four or five months travel was

banned because COVID happened and a lot of people at the time said well what a

terrible mistake to have made to have done a you know good thing buying Thomas

Cook and keeping people employed but actually with COVID that was exactly the last thing anybody wanted.

Absolutely you think it was some bizarre MBA test you tick on all those additional stores and

3,000 people and have a responsibility for paying those people and looking after them and then you

weren't able to sell holidays.

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