Vitruvian Partners has backed the Manchester-based company in a “secondary management buyout” from Equistone Partners Europe, which first invested in Travel Counsellors in 2014.
Steve Byrne, Travel Counsellors’ chief executive, told TTG the deal with Vitruvian would “help us to scale the business” over the next few years.
The company had total sales of £512 million last year and is on course for a new record of more than £600 million for its current financial year ending in October 2018.
Byrne said: “Through caring for our customers and the bespoke tools, technology and support we provide to our Travel Counsellors, we’re extremely proud to be creating a future without limits for our people, with the aim of reaching over £1 billion in sales over the next few years.”
He said the investment by Equistone had allowed Travel Counsellors to “expand the leadership team and talent in the business”, as well as invest in technology, such as the Phenix booking system and myTC app.
“We will carry on disrupting the industry, but always with caring at the heart of what we do,” added Byrne.
He continued: “We’re also focused on talent development on a global basis. Vitruvian has the quality and experience to help us with that. The most important thing was finding someone with a natural affinity for our business model of enabling and empowering people to run their own business from home.”
Byrne said Travel Counsellors had considered becoming a listed company through an initial public offering (IPO) of shares before opting for the backing of another private equity investor.
“An IPO is still a long-term opportunity for us but there’s clearly no rush now,” he said. “We’re happy we found the next right partner in Vitruvian.”
Vitruvian already has experience of working in the travel industry, having previously invested in companies such as Skyscanner, JacTravel and airline data specialist OAG.
“The strategy is not going to change – we’ll continue to do what we do, but scale it by having a greater investment in technology, improve support for Travel Counsellors and encourage more people to come under the Travel Counsellors umbrella,” added Byrne.
Travel Counsellors currently has about 1,800 homeworkers on its books across seven markets:UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, Australia and Dubai.
“We are recruiting a Travel Counsellor every working day on average and we expect that rate of growth to continue,” said Byrne. “We want to attract more people into the model.”
This growth will be initially focused on the seven markets where Travel Counsellors already operates, rather than adding new countries. Byrne added there were “no firm plans” to move into new markets, seeing plenty of UK growth opportunities, despite already having 1,000 agents in the market.
“We expect the growth to come in all countries... we still expect to grow in the UK,” said Byrne.
Byrne highlighted Travel Counsellors’ record-breaking financial earnings over the past 10 years and “expected that trend to continue”. The company will be focusing on both leisure and corporate travel to fuel growth in sales.
Travel Counsellors is planning to continue investing around £6 million per year on enhancing technology and services to homeworkers.
“We moved from Bolton to Manchester two and a half years ago and that’s been another major investment,” said Byrne.
“This has given us the physical infrastructure for the business to carry on growing.” Around 300 staff are currently employed at the Manchester head office with another 80 support staff based in the firm’s other markets.
Around 80 people are employed in the IT team, including a small office in Cape Town.
Byrne said this team was likely to grow in the next few years with a “disproportionate” number of these new roles being in IT.
“We are looking at new technology like AI (artificial intelligence) to improve our service to Travel Counsellors so they can spend more time with their clients,” explained Byrne.
Byrne thanked founders David and Maureen Speakman, along with all Travel Counsellors colleagues for their help in “making the business the success it is today”.
