It’s late afternoon, and Dame Irene, Hays Travel’s chief operating officer Jonathon Woodall-Johnston and I are meeting in the restaurant of the stately Carden Park Hotel and estate following the annual Hays Travel Independence Group (IG) conference.

Over the past four-and-a-half hours, IG members have been run through all manner of advice and tips on how they can best navigate the current tough trading environment, from diversifying their product mix to thinking more strategically about the future.

Dame Irene Hays believes there are three factors that set the IG group apart from other consortia: a solid reputation, a strong balance sheet, and the fact that she personally – as the owner of the UK’s largest travel agency business – continues to have her finger firmly on the industry’s pulse.

She is also quick to hail the efforts of Hays Travel’s staff and that of IG members for their role in the agency’s continued market leadership.

No cost concerns

Despite the difficult landscape, Hays smashed its latest financial targets after achieving £3 billion in sales for the first time ever on 20 March – a month ahead of the end of its current financial year (30 April). “We set ourselves some robust and challenging targets, and we have exceeded them all,” she says, beaming.

Always astute and rarely prone to exaggeration, Dame Irene credits Hays Travel’s "exceptional" staff for the business’s performance, and also having the strongest possible partnerships with suppliers.

Her comments come as Hays Travel, like thousands of other UK businesses, face significant additional costs just to go about business as usual owing to measures outlined in Labour’s first Budget for 15 years, which include raising minimum wage thresholds and employer National Insurance contributions, among other costs.

However, while Dame Irene reveals the additional expenditure will run to more than the £6 million a year Hays original anticipated, she is not perturbed. "It’s right and proper that the lowest-earning in society can have a decent salary, so it’s something we’re not concerned about,” she explains. “We just need to cover the extra costs.”

But it still begs the question, how will the group make up the shortfall brought by these overheads? The group’s aim is to reduce its reliance on short-haul travel and to focus more on more lucrative cruise and long-haul sales, and by 2027 make each of these sectors responsible for a third of all sales.

Dame Irene and Woodall-Johnston insist the strategy will also prove to clients that Hays Travel agents and Hays IG members can be relied on to use their expertise to package more complex enquiries and trips should more consumers seek to book their short-haul trips themselves or direct.

"We would rather migrate to long-haul and cruise, where the customer is less likely to book online and [can rely] on the advice the travel agent is able to give them," says Dame Irene.

Diversifying its product mix and focusing on more unique product is part of the IG group’s strategy, but Woodall-Johnston tells me the success of this will depend on how quickly members pivot to cruise and long-haul and how they manage priorities and new costs.

"They will withstand the increase in costs, but whether they will be as profitable as they were is another question,” Woodall-Johnston explains. “But this is not new for the independence group – every year, the government increases the National Living Wage, and members have to respond to that.”

Woodall-Johnston stresses the group is ready to offer financial – as well as strategic – assistance to the group’s 120 members to help them succeed, and insists he is happy with membership levels. “We’re not the biggest consortium, but what we want to make sure, with support from Hays Travel, that businesses that are part of the independence group are successful,” he adds.

‘Exciting announcements’

Asked about her biggest hope for Hays IG members this year, Dame Irene doesn’t hesitate; she wants members to leverage the group’s healthy balance sheet and the assistance it puts at their disposal.

“The hope is they take the opportunities we talked about today, whether it’s developing a strategy with [strategy director] Lisa McAuley or discussing financing and opportunities for growth with Jonathon, so next year we have something to showcase,” she says.

Hays Travel is rarely forthcoming on its plans before making a success of them. Pressed on the coming years, Dame Irene is keeping her cards close. "[There’s] lots of exciting announcements," she says. Undoubtedly the first we’ll hear is when IG members are already making a success of them.