Co-owner Iain Kirkbright, who runs the agency with his wife Sally, told TTG he was looking for high street premises with space for a minimum of five staff.

Sunlounger has three stores in East Anglia in King’s Lynn, Huntingdon and Wisbech, and it is here Kirkbright is aiming to open a fourth. The agency also has branches in Milton Keynes and Gloucester.

However, he has a strict set of criteria for Sunlounger’s next opening. “The money is there to help market and promote a new store so we will crack on finding another one," he said.

“We’ll look for another location that will help cement who we are and our reputation in the core area. We know the locations we want to go to, and we have a long list of places in this area of where we could open a shop quite quickly and easily, bringing benefits for both ourselves and the local community as we do like to be involved in our communities.”

Kirkbright added that while he is keen to see the new shop open as soon as possible, the actual building was as important a consideration as the location it’s based in.

"It’s all well and good having the location, but if the right shop unit is not available, we won’t take a shop just for the sake of it – it’s got to be the right one."

He also reiterated a previous pledge not to open a travel agency anywhere that would jeopardise another independent agency’s business. “We’re a small independent – we don’t want to rock up to another small independents town and diminish their return.

"We’re all in the same business, and we need to work sensibly as there is enough business out there for everybody.”

Kirkbright said he was keen to be on the high street to attract walk-in footfall with enough space for a minimum of five members of staff. "That’s what you really need for them to be independent of everybody else, especially if you are looking at a seven-day opening,” he said.

Once the shop is up and running, Kirkbright said he would look to recruit a mix of experienced agents, as well as those who are new to travel. "We’ve got a really good mix of people across the stores including people with wider experience of the industry.

“We also invest quite heavily in apprenticeships, and we also bring people on who have a passion for travel and the right attitude. If they have something about them, we can train the travel [knowledge] so experience is not essential. But we do like to get a couple of people in there with core experience to get the stores up and running.”

Once the new shop is open, staff are given free rein to run the business as they see fit. They can also draw on admin support from Kirkbright’s separate digital marketing business, Chaos Internet, which is based in March, Cambridgeshire.

He said: “We’ve got an administration department that will help when they need them – some of our stores really like to make use of it, while some prefer to do everything in house.

"Each store runs independently, although we speak to them on a day-to-day basis. We don’t want to be micro-managing – they know what they’re doing so we let them do what they do best.”

Once opened, the shop will be Sunlounger’s sixth. Kirkbright has previously said the business could ultimately grow to have as many as 25 shops.

He also thanked Jet2.com and Jet2holidays for its financial support, which he said was a sign of the operator’s ongoing support for travel agents across the UK.

"Jet2 have always been really positive with regards to agent interaction and their support," he added. "You see it through all the events they run over the last few years."