Pettitts Travel has grown enormously since its establishment in 1988, expanding from a small high street shop in Tunbridge Wells into a thriving business across the UK featuring worldwide destinations.
Today, it specialises in creating tailor-made luxury holidays in 25 countries for thousands of people a year. Also a tour operator, it holds a 98% positive feedback score and is the main contributor to the leisure division of CT Travel Group’s £43 million annual turnover.
Pettitts’ success is perhaps best reflected, however, in its client base, which stands at an impressive retention rate of 65%.
Many of these are legacy customers who have been with the brand since the beginning, and the proof is in the bookings - the majority are made by older travellers with a disposable income and more time for long-haul getaways. Some have bought up to 50 holidays from Pettitts, having grown to trust the company’s expertise and attention to detail over the years.
“Most of our clients want 17-day, tailor-made journeys in destinations like India,” Mark Kempster, chief executive of Pettitts Travel, tells TTG Luxury. “This can be a minimum of £6,000 per person, so it tends to be people aged between mid-40s and 70s with decent budgets.”
Pettitts Travel fits snugly into this comfort zone, but it’s not afraid to stretch itself further. New customers are the blood flow of any business, which is why the self-described ‘entrepreneurial’ agency is always on the lookout to expand its client base.
Knowing well that its longer tours may not appeal to everyone, Pettitts has since also developed a strategic yet simple way to tap into an unlikely market.
Short and sweet
Pettitts has mastered the art of selling shorter trips to travellers with niche interests, who, in turn, may then book one of the agency’s longer tours.
An example of this is the company’s collection of opera packages, which include 16 holidays to various opera houses around Europe. With the exception of one, all tours are just four days in length - making them an appetiser on Pettitts’ full menu.
The majority of the opera breaks sell for under £1,000, which again, allows travellers to experience the brand at a lower price before investing in a longer trip.
“It’s an in-road into gaining new clients,” Kempster explains. “We have someone we work with to procure opera tickets, and then we market opera breaks to places like Verona, Milan, Venice, Milan and Rome. We put them together as packages with hotels, transfers and flights, and then market them to the client base and online.”
He adds that this strategy is also behind Pettitts’ Venice Simplon-Orient-Express rail trip offering, which, at just two days in length, again targets travellers with less time on their hands.
To Kempster, this is another effective way for the business to show new clients what it’s made of, so that, when that same guest wants to book a longer holiday, they’ll know exactly which agency to choose.
“Down the line, they might become a client who goes on one of our tours to India,” he explains. These mini-breaks are also a shortcut to highlighting the clients’ tastes and preferences, helping Pettitts to market the right tour to the right person. “What we’re trying to anticipate is what might somebody be looking to use a business like ours for,” Kempster adds.
Happy supplier, happy client
In Kempster’s experience, the satisfaction of the client is largely determined by the quality of the suppliers. In order to ensure they can emulate its high standard of service, Pettitts emphasises the importance of a collaborative work ethic.
“We achieve strong relationships in key places by thinking of them as a partner, not just a supplier,” he explains. “When things do occasionally go wrong we try and understand why and work with them to mitigate things in the future. We understand they need to make money as well as us, so we keep the relationship personal. We visit them when possible and thank their staff personally.
“In India, we have a team of 16 people, including drivers and guides, working on the ground exclusively for us.” This close communication with an in-house team gives Pettitts more control to curate and personalise its tours, which is inevitably to the benefit of clients.
As for new destinations, Pettitts is also planning to launch product in Central Asian countries such as Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, adding that it ultimately hopes to offer tours that visit the Belt and Road initiative.
“There is great opportunity there for tourism, especially for handheld adventure,” Kempster says. “We’ll never send hundreds of people a year to this region, but if we can send 20 or 30 people to two or three of those countries, on tailor-made tours, that’s great for us. I’m very excited about it.”
