Addressing the agency's conference in northern Italy at the weekend (3 October), Managing Director Nicki Tempest-Mitchell insisted new store openings "remain firmly on the agenda" despite conceding the business hadn't moved "as quickly as we wanted" on retail this year.

"We're definitely committed to opening a couple of stores every year," Tempest-Mitchell told TTG. "We've done quite a lot of work in terms of the locations we definitely want to go ahead with. We just need a little bit of time once we get back [from conference] to make that happen."

Barrhead on course to match record year and take confidence into 2027

Barrhead was acquired by US-based Travel Leaders Group, now Internova Travel Group, in early 2018 and set about rapidly expanding its network, particularly in England. However, this was curtailed by the pandemic, with one store closing just a few days after it opened its doors.

Tempest-Mitchell said this time round, "steady growth" was the objective. "We don't believe in going out and doing significant numbers," she said. "It's more about getting the right team in the right location where we've not got a retail footprint, and that's across the whole of the UK."

'Where next?'

Scotland will be Barrhead's initial focus, Tempest-Mitchell said, adding the business still saw "a lot of potential" in Northern Ireland where it now has three stores in Belfast, Rushmere and Newtonabbey. "That's another really important market for us."

Barrhead also has unfinished business in England, Tempest-Mitchell said. "When you look at our expansion in England, that goes back to the pre-Covid days. We expanded pretty aggressively, we opened about 15 stores in England in three months. So that was a challenge.

"Our plan was to open a few more as well, but we obviously paused plans [because of the pandemic]."

13 talking points from the 2026 Barrhead Travel conference

Tempest-Mitchell said this was reflected in Barrhead's patchwork network of 17 stores in England, which stretches from the Isle of Wight and the south coast to Merseyside, Yorkshire and the North East.

"We've got some in clusters, and some that aren't," she explained. "So we absolutely have to revisit England and finish that piece off. We've got Plymouth, we've got Isle of Wight, we've got Southampton – Southampton was one of Barrhead's original stores in England. We've got to prioritise and think – where do we go? Where first?"

Tempest-Mitchell said there was an overriding imperative, though. "What's really important to us is getting the right teams, because you can have the best location – but if you don't have the team, then it's not going to work. Those things have got to go hand-in-hand."

She added: "We're not averse to going out and saying, 'where should we go next?'. That's worked for us in the past. But for Scotland, we're very clear as to where our opportunities lie."

Brilliant Travel growth

Earlier this year, Barrhead bought out the remaining shares in its Falkirk franchise store from Greig Avinou, who was the Owner and Director of the award-winning shop. Avinou has since joined Jet2holidays as its Partnership Development Manager for Scotland and Cumbria.

Asked if Barrhead had looked at acquiring any of its Brilliant Travel-managed service travel partners (MSTPs), now known as Brilliant Travel Partners, Tempest-Mitchell said: "We've not got any plans around acquisitions at this moment in time," adding Barrhead was actively looking to grow Brilliant's retail and homeworking network.

Tempest-Mitchell said seven homeworkers have joined the group this year, and three new MSTPs, with another four joining. New additions include The Travel Village Group, which quit the Co-operative Travel Consortium earlier this year to join Brilliant. It will start trading as a Brilliant member next month.

The additions will double Brilliant's turnover, Tempest-Mitchell revealed at the conference.

"Our plan is to continue growing that part of it," Tempest-Mitchell added. "What we've learnt is we need to grow because there's huge opportunity out there, huge market share for us to gain, so that's definitely an ambition of ours."