Westoe Travel, South Shields

Westoe Travel, South Shields
North East’s Top Agency 2020

Led by husband and wife duo Graeme and Joan Brett, Westoe Travel has been a fixture in South Shields for 31 years, and consistently goes above and beyond to win the hearts and minds of the community.

Having spent the first 20 years in the back of a newsagent, the shop now sits proudly on a main thoroughfare and uses tall A-board banners to catch the eye of motorists driving past.

Residents will be no strangers to the Westoe logo, with the shop taking out a full-page advert in two local newspapers each fortnight, parking a branded van at events and sponsoring multiple local sports teams.

Offers and promotions in the Westoe Telegraph newsletter are also delivered to 72,000 houses on a recurring six-week cycle, accompanying a redesigned fortnightly email and multiple Twitter accounts specifically for people interested in different types of holiday.

Additionally, the team – four-sixth of whom are in the Brett family – have extensive product knowledge boosted by undertaking a plethora of training courses.

The team strive to go the extra mile for customers whenever they can, which has seen long-haul specialist Gillian undertake a sign language course to help one particular client. Other recent examples include the team ringing around restaurants in Italy to find an establishment that could offer a gluten, rye, wheat, and barley-free menu, and senior sales consultant Martin driving one client 111 miles to catch up with a missed bus transfer.

Consultants pride themselves on being able to give personal recommendations, and their extensive travel experience is apparent in the store itself, with the walls decked in an assortment of holiday snaps.

Supporting charities is a big part of Westoe Travel’s DNA, and Graeme is a trustee of the Chloe and Liam Together Forever Trust, which he helped set up in the wake of the Manchester bomb attack, which claimed the life of their apprentice Chloe Rutherford.

More recently, Westoe Travel introduced a Charity of the Month initiative, and is making a donation to the chosen cause for every booking made in that month.

westoetravel.co.uk