Oasis Travel, Antrim
Oasis Travel Ltd is one of the most successful independent Northern Ireland Travel Agents winning prestigious awards year after year. In April this year all five branches were sucessfully upgraded to Tarsc Version 8.
Barfield Travel, Newark - 17th July 2008
Situated in Newark, Agricultural Travel have been in existence for 50 years and have been with Tarsc for over 10 years, they are fairly unique in travel as they are three businesses in one featuring a retail high street shop in the centre of Newark with a TMC and specialist incoming farming tours division just off the market square.
The business supports 17 staff and is wholly owned by its working directors with farming backgrounds
Carolyne Cree is the Travel Director, herself from a local farming background, she has just returned from hosting a 2 week tour of livestock breeders from around the world visiting cattle shows and individual herds including visits to Belfast, Scotland, Norfolk and ending in Warwick.
This £3.2m business handles outgoing and incoming tourism using Tarsc software and has just completed a major upgrade to Tarsc version 8.
Travel Club Elite, Birmingham - 29th July 2008
Travel Club Elite and owner Colin Matthews are one of the first travel agents in the UK to install the Vertical Group’s Athena product.
Colin has worked in the travel business for over 38 years and has owned his own business previously called Travel Economy for 24 years, based in Yardley a suburb of Birmingham.
Travel Economy was one of the first travel agents to automate their back office using Tarsc and now renamed Travel Club Elite are the only general retail independent travel agent left in Birmingham city centre.
Located in the Paradise shopping centre with 5 staff Colin specialises in worldwide luxury activity holidays and is a top agent for Club Med, Mark Warner and Kuoni and for the first quarter of this year was top UK agent for Bales.
Colin has many firsts including one of the first to join Midconsort now called Elite Travel Group and one of the first agents in the UK to upgrade to Tarsc’s version 8 operating system which fronted by Athena and linked to Magic Professional gives him full CRM capability within a single system.
Colin recognises that customer profiles are important to his business and Athena will enable him to compare enquiry and booked business, “handling customers professionally is key to my success”
Duncans Travel, Aberdeen
Just to let you know that our upgrade seems to have gone very well. Gary and Justin were fantastic – all seemed very effortless – well from our end it did! I was really pleased with the way it went as they did everything they said they’d do and they were more than helpful”
Yours Sincerely
Brenda Duncan
Branch Manager
Duncans Travel
Text Abroad Holidays, Manchester
Sunshine Holidays previously known as Text Abroad was based in Birmingham and their core market was selling holidays to Turkey.
The business took off when the rest of the travel trade fell out with First Choice and Dan Townsley the owner saw an opportunity and heavily promoted Island Cruises becoming one of their top selling agents in the UK
As this relationship grew Island Cruises took a financial interest in the agency and just over 3 years ago eventually moved to Salford Quays in Manchester overlooking the Manchester Ship Canal. The business was eventually taken over by Island Cruises which is now owned by TUI and has an annual turnover of £6m and growing.
Sunshine Holidays saw the need to move from version 6 Tarsc to version 8 and take advantage of Tarsc’s new documentation and automated letters.
Matt Roberts the call centre manager said that the new version projects an improved company image to the customer and speeds up some of the processes.