Inside Highgate Travel there’s a faint sound of birdsong. The till intermittently rings. Occasionally the door chimes as a customer enters the store.

But otherwise it’s almost completely silent. Outside the back office window chestnut trees stand tall beside the grass. Here, perched on top of the hill in Highgate Village we’re just six miles away from the City of London, but it feels light years away.

Owner and managing director Stephen Worswick waves at a local passer-by through the window - an area that he can barely touch because it forms part of a conservation area. Aside from the independent travel agency, the whole street is brimming with independent butchers and bakers, and many are housed in Georgian buildings.

“It’s a real village community feel,” says Worswick. “And one of only five villages remaining in London.”

Inside, the shop is dotted with vintage curios; from the custom-built and designed 1980s brochure racks to the 1950s raised-relief world map and the beautifully illustrated, framed Pan Am menus.

There are some nods to modernity, but the decor is largely in-keeping with the bygone era of more glamorous travel. And that’s just the way Worswick likes it.

“It’s as it was and I like to keep it like that.,” he says. “The clients wouldn’t have it any other way either. We’re completely computer literate and we’ve got all the latest systems, but we haven’t gone for the paperless office. We couldn’t do it. It’s too personal a touch here.”

Family ties

The company was founded in 1927 by childless married couple Cyril and Flora Taylor. Their first shop, located in Archway, sold sweets, but the couple then branched into selling coach day trips.

As the business grew to include package coach tours, and eventually package tour holidays, so the staff expanded to 20 and the total number of premises increased to four. The final store, and now the only one remaining, is Highgate Travel, which opened in 1968.

Worswick joined the business in 1973 as a 19-year-old trainee. Within five years of working for the company both Cyril and Flora died, and their first cousin, Guy Simmonds, came on board to run the business. “He and I became very close,” says Worswick. “It’s like he adopted me as a son.”

Then, when Simmonds passed away in 1994, Worswick’s family inherited the business.

“My mother and sister had already been working for Guy so we then took over and finalised the sale of the other shops,” he says. “Since then we’ve successfully maintained just the one shop here, which is a family-owned, independent, high-end travel agency.”

In the early days of the takeover, Worswick says he had grand plans for expansion, looking to open shops across some of London’s most affluent boroughs. While this vision never came to fruition, Worswick did dabble in the LGBT market in the mid-1990s.

“We opened the first gay retail travel agency in Soho,” he says. “That was quite a move and successful for a time, then the lease expired and we had to close it. It’s quite a responsibility running two to three shops and we’ve only got so many family members!”

“Our clientele is all local and we’re not marketing ourselves out of the area. We’re happy with what we’ve got.”

Then, three years ago Worswick lost his mother, who was also Highgate’s chairman, and started running the business with his sister Christine as manager. He now lives in the flat above the shop.

Today he remains focused on the Highgate store and has no plans to buy any more prime real estate. “There’s not huge room for expansion here. Our clientele is all local and we’re not marketing ourselves out of the area. We’re happy with what we’ve got.”

The agency does not have a website or any social media presence, and despite the almost industry-wide perception that digital is the way forward, Worswick says his traditional stance is working in the agency’s favour. If anything it’s attracting new customers rather than losing them, he adds.

But has Worswick always been so staunch in staying true to the agency’s roots? “If you had asked me that question five years ago I would have said ‘No way. The internet will take over, we’re all going to be booking everything on mobile phones and maybe we’ll be under threat again,’” he says. “It has not happened.”

Internet fatigue

Instead, Worswick says a reactionary movement has emerged among the prosperous younger generation - who are either descendants of old money, or are moving to the area with their new money - which draws them back to his agency.

“When our older customers started dying off and the yuppies started coming in we thought we’d lose them, but quite the reverse.

Youngsters are hankering for vintage, old-fashioned style service. They don’t necessarily know where they want to go, but they do want to be guided and to hear about some of these wonderful places.

“I call it a renaissance, a revitalisation. Ted Wake at Kirker Holidays calls it ‘internet fatigue’ and we’re experiencing that without a doubt.”

“When the yuppies started coming in we thought we’d lose them, but quite the reverse. Youngsters are hankering for vintage, old-fashioned style service.”

Worswick adds that a boon of being located in such a wealthy area is that he has a captive market. Local residents, he explains, are keen to shop locally, and Highgate Travel is the only agency in the area.

The immediate vicinity is where Worswick focuses his marketing efforts too. “We do a fair amount of advertising in the local newspaper and at local events, such as at the Christmas lights switch-on and at fundraisers for local schools,” he says. “It reminds people of our presence.”

To keep up to date with industry developments and meet new faces, Worswick attends as many events and conferences as he can, while both he and Christine also grasp any opportunity to attend fam trips.

Community and word of mouth are the main tenets of the business, which has a repeat clientele of 90%. And the agency’s list of loyal customers may include some familiar names. “Trudie Styler (the wife of musician Sting) came in for brochures frequently [when she lived in the area] and Victoria Wood comes in for train tickets,” he says.

“We also get Judith Chalmers and we have accounts with people like the Pentland Group (which manages brands such as Kickers and Speedo) and Fenwicks.”

It’s not hard to imagine why Worswick has such a loyal clientele. Within five minutes of entering the store he’s already chatting to me like an old friend; he compliments me on my coat, asks if I’ve downloaded new software for my iPhone yet and exclaims how impressed he is with my geographic knowledge of Italy.

“We have an informal, friendly relationship with the clients,” he says. “First name terms are frequent and we operate an appointment system for big, high-end bookings.”

After 41 years of not just working in the same industry, but in the same shop, doesn’t it all get a little repetitive? Worswick says that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I still love the job, it still excites me,” he says. “Travel’s my passion. I love meeting people and selling holidays and seeing their faces before they go and when they come back. I look forward to coming downstairs every day.”