Hays, the UK’s largest independent travel agency chain, opened its 171st store on Wednesday (October 3), with nine more due “before Christmas” - extending its network to 180 shops in total.

Retail director Jane Schumm told delegates at the Hays Travel Independence Group conference she expected all nine stores to be fully operational by January.

It is the latest development in the recent rapid expansion of Hays Travel, which has in recent years revisited its recruitment ethos to ensure it can adequately staff its new stores, such as by embracing apprenticeships.

"Clearly, we wouldn’t be opening these shops if we were not trading well," said Hays, speaking at the conference in the Algarve on Sunday.

"We have shops in the north east where all the staff joined us from school and the culture within Hays Travel gets embedded in them.

"If we are growing rapidly, we do need to bring people in from outside though, and that’s a problem for us. The people from big chains don’t always have the same culture we are looking for. There are some brilliant people, but they might not fit in. So increasingly, we are taking people from elsewhere."

Hays said the business’s travel academy allowed the company, the UK’s largest independent travel agency chain, to bring people in with the necessary skills from outside travel, train and reskill them, and then employ them at a more senior level.

Hays Travel was founded in 1980 by John Hays at the back of his mum’s children clothes store in Seaham. It achieved £500 million turnover in 2012 before a year later embarking on its most substantial acquisition to date, that of Bath Travel’s 60 stores.

Hays has since achieved £1 billion turnover for the first time, in the year to April this year. The IG group, meanwhile, was founded in 1995 and now boasts more than 100 members.