Cleary, managing director of the London-based luxury operator since 2004, has purchased 100% of the share capital of the company from founders Norman and Valerie Brunskill.

He said the takeover had "long been the intention" since joining as general manager in 1999 - with buyout talks beginning in earnest 18 months ago.

For 2020, Caribtours has doubled its European programme, offering Santorini, Ibiza and Turkey for the first time.

Following the opening of its Dublin office in May 2018, the operator will “imminently” roll out a bookable website to agents in the country, before looking to offer the platform to UK-based trade partners.

"We see so much business these days coming from remote and home-based agents and the site can offer that out-of-hours service," he told TTG. "Ireland is going to be phase one and then from that we can develop things further."

"Everything we do has independent agents in mind and we want all of our targeted 2020 growth to come from the trade."

Cleary said Caribtours was in "a fantastic place to grow" having returned to profit in 2019.

He described the operator’s £196,000 loss during its 2018 financial year as "a blip", due to the impact of Hurricane Irma on its core Caribbean product in September 2017.

"We returned to some level of normalcy last year and have projected some good figures for 2020. It’s early days but the business we’ve seen since Boxing Day has been phenomenal," he added.