It’s not often you hear a travel agent, particularly an Irish one who has run a successful agency business for the past 36 years, talk up Ryanair.

While John Galligan’s view on the budget airline and how it has influenced travel agents is unforeseen, if perhaps not surprising, you get the sense it's this kind of stance that has helped Galligan and his business thrive.  

Last year, Galligan sold his eponymous Dublin-based agency to Frosch Ireland and has now officially retired, although Frosch did try – at short notice – to persuade him to stay on in an ambassadorial capacity.

'Ryanair forced agents to think differently'

“Ryanair has probably done more for travel agents than anybody else,” Galligan says. “In 2008, they said they would not pay us commission. At that time, airlines were generally cutting commissions.

“All we could do was influence volume and cost. We were sold the ticket at one price and we sold it to the customer for a higher price. We had to focus on what we were selling.

“Ryanair did us a huge favour and made us study mathematics. We now had control of our own margins and we could control our turnover.”

I ask if Galligan has a commercial arrangement with Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s divisive Chief Executive, that he’s keeping a secret. “I have no relationship with that man," Galligan responds, curtly. "I’ve heard he’s very personable, but professionally, I think he’s a prat."

Today, John Galligan Travel is, according to its now former owner, a “high-end and expedition cruise specialist”.

In fact, cruising in Antarctica is what's been getting 71-year-old Galligan out of bed in the morning since the Covid pandemic.

John Galligan

Galligan, who started his first job in travel with British Airways on 1 April 1974, last year told TTG: "I’ve not worked on the boats or the railway, but I’ve done everything else."

Speaking to TTG this time to officially mark his retirement – although he's got a couple more work events he’s committed to – Galligan says his “biggest” learning from his carrer in travel is the damaging impact of a powerful executive’s ego.

“I got frustrated working for people who didn’t know the business," he explains. "What I learnt from these people who were running these organisations is that their biggest problem is their ego."

'We were punching above our weight'

This, Galligan says, ultimately drove him to launch John Galligan Travel in 1989. Like any business owner with a degree of success, Galligan is prepared to admit when he has enjoyed some good fortune.

“We'd only been open for a couple of months when Italia ’90 arrived," he recalls. "It was like the Rio Carnival in Dublin because Ireland had qualified for the World Cup.

“Within months, I was chartering 250-seater planes to Rome – and filling them. So that gave us a good start. It was a good fillip I had not expected.”

What makes this point in John Galligan Travel’s story even more incredible is the agency did not even have a tour operator’s licence going into the tournament.

“I was able to get one in a few days, but I didn’t think Ireland’s time in the tournament would last a long time,” he adds.

The good fortune did not end there. Around six months after opening its doors for the first time, the agency landed its first Concorde booking. Galligan says this was “huge” for his fledgling business.

And when the next football World Cup arrived four years’ later, and, in the same year, the rugby World Cup, Galligan managed to source tickets each time to sell on to his growing customer base.

A smiling Galligan remarks: “Little John Galligan shouldn’t have been there, but he was. We were punching above our weight.”

By the late 1990s, when John Galligan Travel was operating out of its Northumberland Road shop, the agency had 22 staff.

Spotting opportunities before others is a theme that runs throughout our hour-long chat. “We’ve always had something up our sleeves,” he explains.

“I’ve always believed that if you come up with a great idea, you have about a year to 18 months before the ‘me-toos’ come along and discount you out of the business.

“We’ve always been looking to do something new, something different, or just something old in a different way.”

Knowing when it's time to get out

Another timely move for John Galligan Travel was the decision to focus almost entirely on high-end cruising and expedition sailings after Covid.

Galligan and his long-time colleague and General Manager, Jennifer Byrne, were both making a million euros in bookings a year during this period. “We were humming along at a decent gross margin and very low costs," he says.

“For me, after 50-odd years in travel, expedition cruise got me out of bed in the morning whereas two weeks in an apartment in Spain just wouldn’t. I still knew I was coming to the end of my rope, though.

“I knew I had only a few years left to rebuild the business after Covid. I got to a point where I could retire. I’ve taken over four or five travel companies in my time, and in every case, the owner had waited too long.”

John Galligan

Interestingly, Galligan says, in his experience, “nobody really plans for the succession”. “Generally, they just keep on going to their detriment,” he warns. “If you're going to get out of a business, you need to have a clear exit strategy to maximise whatever value there is left in it.

“I take tremendous pride in having passed over something that we’ve created that is really worthwhile. We’ve made Antarctica affordable for the ordinary Irish man or woman.”

I ask how he has achieved this. After all, Polar cruises do not come cheap. “We’ve done it by talking to the customers and saying, ‘This is going to hurt. You need to prepare for this cost and you need to save for that'."

Galligan reveals he and Byrne will book an Antarctica cruise for customers who they’ve been taking to for “two or three years”.

“Two years ago, I delivered the tickets to a guy, a factory worker who worked nights, at his workplace in Bray just south of Dublin,” says Galligan.

“He wanted to go to Antarctica and South America. He had a very good idea of what he wanted to do.”

John Galligan

The customer flew into Santiago in Chile and went to Torres del Paine National Park and then sailed with HX Expeditions to Antarctica before going to Iquitos and the source of the Amazon.

“The whole booking was around €20,000. If you really want to go to Antarctica, most of us, not all of us, could find that money over a number of years,” explains Galligan. “I was very proud to go to the factory and say ‘here are your tickets’. He really had a ball. I spoke to him afterwards.”

Has he become a repeat customer of Galligan’s? “I haven’t heard from him since,” says Galligan. “But if you think about what I’ve just said, he’s probably saving for another trip. Once you go to Antarctica, you tend to be hooked. He will be back.”

So will John Galligan ever return as a travel agent? “I’ve been working four days a week since last April. That gave me one day a week to sit and do nothing,” he says.

“I look at retirement as being like a door has just opened and there’s a field in front of me with nothing in it and I look forward to getting into that field. I like woodwork, I’ve taken up gardening and I like painting."