The high street agency has been in the same building in the West Yorkshire village of Boston Spa since Dayson set up the family business with his parents back in 1980.

And While the bricks and mortar may not have changed in those 45 years – the family bought the freehold back in the 1980s – the same cannot be said for travel itself.

“The industry has changed so much since 1980 when you had the start of computerisation and we were testing [information retrieval service] viewdata,” Dayson told TTG. “I’ve always been very forward thinking and looking at what comes next.”

But before embarking on Spa Travel’s future chapters, Dayson decided to hold a birthday roadshow in Boston Spa’s village hall at the start of August.

He described the event as “absolutely first class”, with nearly 40 operators attending the event and around 250 people coming through the doors. It also raised £1,500 for local charity Martin House Children’s Hospice.

“It was very successful and we’ve already seen plenty of interest, including some really good cruise bookings,” said Dayson. “Getting bookings in the same week is a massive plus as sometimes you only get enquiries a year down the line.”

Dayson said it was first time the agency had held a roadshow of this size for around 15 years – he had previously been focusing on holding smaller and more targeted client events in recent years.

“We looked at it as a 45^th anniversary celebration – everybody seems to do these events in January and February, but we thought August was good for us, as we have a very strong winter market and it was a good idea to get people interested now,” he explained.

Spa Travel currently has a sales team of three, including Dayson, plus a fourth member of staff who handles admin. “Since Covid we’ve had the best three years – it’s been continuously going up, although this year has been more testing so I don’t know if the bubble has burst,” he added.

Dayson is always looking to innovate and in March took the decision to close the shop on Saturdays to give his staff two days off at the weekend.

“I said I will still pay them for six days a week, but the three of us on the counter would only work Monday to Friday,” he explained. “It has been working well – the staff have two days off and it’s not affected sales at all. We’ll come in on a Saturday if we know that somebody is coming in to make a booking.”

Dayson admits he is “always around” the agency and that policy helped Spa Travel to maintain its profile during the pandemic. “Even though we had to lock the front door, I was always present so people knew we were still around,” he remembers. “That was a massive thing for keeping our clientele.

“When we came out of Covid, we had £1 million in bookings as people were rolling them over and not cancelling. That was a great testament to the loyalty of our clients.”

As for the coming years, Dayson has his eyes on building up Spa Travel’s homeworking operation. Currently, there are two homeworkers on the agency’s books.

“I’m looking to open the doors to more homeworkers without the restrictions they have elsewhere,” he said. “They would be self-employed and have their own clients – we would just bond them and have a commission split; there will be no monthly fees.

“They would need to be recommended to me or I would know them. We want experienced people who have got a good track record. I’m aiming for 10 homeworkers to start with and see how it goes.”