January is always going to be a busy month in travel, but that’s even more reason to make sure your clients have every opportunity to discover something new in travel. In Blackpool, our Travel Village store has the prestige of being the Fylde Coast’s longest serving travel agency. That’s not something that we take for granted, especially as we enter our 65th year of trading!
On 21st January 2024, the entire Travel Village team returned to the Village Hotel, Blackpool for our second “Travel Village Travel Show”. Following client and operator feedback, from 2023, we actually scaled back the number of operators invited to showcase their products. Clients remarked that they felt more relaxed and better able to sit and talk properly with our travel partners and agents, and we will once again adapt this policy for 2025.
We want to keep our January event fresh and exciting each year.
Group CEO Phil Nuttall
Presenting…
Back again for 2024 were the dedicated presentations; so that clients could find out more in-depth information regarding a product. Again, we scaled these presentations back to just 4 slots, making them less hurried, and with more time for questions. Presentations given by Santa’s Lapland/Inghams and Virgin Voyages were well attended, and have resulted in enquiries and bookings since.
We took a slightly different format for our River Cruising presentation though… Rather than focussing on just one cruise line, we looked at exactly what makes river cruising so special, unique and amazing value. Who better to showcase this to our customers than our own Phil & Paula Nuttall! They were able to explain the basics of this niche product, and embellish on it with their own experiences across Europe’s rivers and the Mekong from a wide range of river cruise lines.
Special Guests
Our other presentation came from Canadian Affair, but was jointly delivered by our Special Guests – Tricia & Cathie, winners of BBC’s Race Across The World third season – who had some amazing insider knowledge to share. They had spent 51 days making their way up, down and across Canada, covering 16,000km, in a bid to win the race against 4 other teams. Both ladies spent the rest of the day swapping travel stories with clients, and meeting more of our travel partners.
Tour operators at the Travel Show included AMA Waterways, Ambassador Cruise Line, APT, Avalon Waterways, Canadian Affair, Celebrity Cruises, Classic Collection, Contantinou Bros, Cunard, Fred. Olsen Cruise Line, Gold Medal, Inghams Ski, Jet2Holidays, Marella Cruises, MSC Cruises, Newmarket Holidays, P&O Cruises, Princess Cruises, Sandals, Santa’s Lapland, Scenic Luxury River Cruises & Tours, TUI Holidays, TUI River Cruises, Uniworld Boutique River Cruises, Virgin Voyages and Wendy Wu Tours.
Hundreds of local (and not-so-local) clients attended the event, eager to see our travel partners and get a great, exclusive deal on the day. Over 50 bookings were made from the Travel Show! And that’s great news for Trinity Hospice & Brian House Children’s Hospice & Palliative Care (our local charity partner), as we’re donating £5 for every booking made.
Visitors also had the opportunity to win in our free prize draw, with prizes of up to £500 in Travel Village holiday vouchers on offer!
Our Travel Show was so successful that we’ve already secured the venue for 2025! Thank you to everyone that came to present or attend! We look forward to seeing you throughout the year, or on 19th January 2025!
