During an impassioned address at the ITT Conference on Monday (13 September), Dame Irene said the trend presented "an opportunity like no other" to emerge from the Covid adversity strongly.
"The current situation is a real opportunity for the high street and retail travel agents," she said. "We know online agents will come back, but we will do everything in our power to look after the 56% new customers – as well as our old customers – so they never want to leave us."
Dame Irene said, on average, just under 20% of the agency’s customers since 2017 were new to the firm. Since April 2021, that the figure has increased to 56%.
