Speaking to TTG at the InteleTravel conference at the weekend, Managing Director UK, Ireland and UAE Tricia Handley-Hughes insists that with the business already on track to achieve £325 million in turnover this year, the target was well within her sights.

"There's a huge amount of opportunity still within our existing agent base," she tells TTG. "It's about boosting productivity and getting our agents to sell more, rather than necessarily getting more agents."

Luxury is a particular focus, with Handley-Hughes arguing agents can add value by identifying those higher-end holidays customers may find harder to book themselves. "Customers can go online and book themselves a bog-standard holiday easily," she asserts. "What's less easy is identifying those luxury holidays, especially as luxury means different things to different people."

Handley-Hughes points to the company's booking engine, IntelePro, which covers flights, accommodation, activities, concerts and events, as one area where its agents are already receiving support to achieve this.

'We've worked hard to achieve this'

With more than 100 supplier partners already on the platform, Handley-Hughes sees scope to develop new propositions with existing suppliers, while making sure agents are using the existing product range as effectively as possible.

"We're seeing suppliers re-evaluate where they focus their energies," Handley-Hughes explains. "And their energies are naturally going to be focused on where they see the biggest return."

She believes this shift in suppliers' priorities plays to InteleTravel's advantage after eight years of building its agent network. "We've got the volume of distribution, which we have worked so hard to achieve," she says.

She also thinks this puts InteleTravel in a strong position as the homeworking market becomes ever-more crowded, with newer players with similar models looking to enter the UK market.

Among them are Fora Travel, another US-based host agency, which last year said it was looking at the UK market. Handley-Hughes acknowledges Fora Travel as a likely future competitor, but stresses InteleTravel's eight-year head start and the scale of its network.

"I think they are competitors, but they would be coming into the market a little bit later," she said. "We've now got our traction. We've got the volume. We've got the distribution which, for me, is unmatched."

She rejects the idea that InteleTravel should still primarily be seen as a "market disruptor", arguing its scale and the businesses that have imitated its model are evidence that it has moved into a different position. "I'd like to think we're a leader in this space," she says.

'InteleTravel has opened up the Irish market'

Handley-Hughes highlights InteleTravel’s expansion into Ireland as an example of its distribution model opening up opportunities for suppliers. The Irish market, she says, was "very traditional" when InteleTravel made its entry two-and-a-half years ago, with some UK partners having previously struggled to establish themselves there.

"InteleTravel came along and opened up the channel of advisers," she claims. "We increased the distribution. Our UK partners saw how we had affected their bottom line here, so because we went into Ireland, they've now followed. People like JTA Travel and Ocean Holidays didn't exist in Ireland until InteleTravel existed."

The company is also due to launch its six-month customer-service excellence programme for agents in January 2027, with the CPD-backed training another example of what Handley-Hughes sees as InteleTravel's leadership of the homeworking sector.

"My vision is to come up with a programme nobody else is doing in the travel industry," she adds. "I want to provide the tools for our agents to improve, to have their customer service skills recognised by a professional body, and to ultimately elevate InteleTravel."