Great Little Breaks has recruited Chris Cundall as director of trade relations and now offers an agents’ log-in on its website.
Diana Evans, managing director of parent company hotelshopUK, said the brand was already selling through Advantage agents and offered a standard 10% commission, with preferential rates negotiable to some agents, together with marketing support.
Great Little Breaks, an Abta member, offers hotel stays with extras such as dinner, afternoon tea or theatre tickets included. All properties it contracts are rated “very good” or above on Trip Advisor.
As well as the UK breaks programme, Droitwich Spa-based hotelshopUK has traded since 1999 and also operates on business corporate travel services and CustomerHubUK, a marketing and contact centre outsourcing business.
Evans said Great Little Breaks, with package sales of less than 16,000, was “David to Super Break’s Goliath”. “We dabbled with the trade a few years ago,” she said. “It was always our strategy to re-tackle it; Super Break has expedited those plans.”
She said further content would be added to the operator’s website in the coming weeks, with more packages in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland to be included. She added that unlike Super Break, “there is no plan to sell overseas breaks”.
Cundall spent 23 years with Super Break before its collapse in August. Online discount brand Wowcher purchased the assets including the online domain name from administrators KPMG a few weeks ago.
“I had a lot of calls from agents after Super Break collapsed saying ‘what are we going to do?’ – there’s a massive gap in the market,” Cundall said. “The job was almost calling for me, I was saying to myself there must be a business out there with a similar product.”
He added that Great Little Breaks had big ambitions for the brand and for its relations with agents. “It makes me realise I have made the right choice,” he said.
