Travel Counsellors announces the acquisition of Holidaysplease

We are delighted to announce the acquisition of Holidaysplease, a network of specialist luxury travel advisors, as we continue our focus on supporting and growing our community of travel entrepreneurs.

Birmingham-based Holidaysplease is an award-winning travel company with approximately 100 home-working travel experts, 50 franchisees, and around 50 employees, who share Travel Counsellors’ people-led values and customer-first business model.

The acquisition further supports our focus on empowering and connecting nearly 2,000 travel professionals to run and scale their own businesses, providing an exceptional level of care to their customers by leveraging our personal, digital platform and global community. The move will enable the Holidaysplease homeworker and franchisee communities to continue running their businesses, supported by its current Directors, wider leadership team and support staff. It will create opportunities for all to benefit from being part of the wider Travel Counsellors community and will see the businesses working collaboratively to build on their collective success, expertise, and knowledge.

The deal marks our first acquisition in our near 30-year history and comes hot on the heels of our best-ever month in January 2023, which saw £114m of sales achieved. This meant we traded 65% up on pre-pandemic levels in Q1 of our new financial year and we are expected to post even more record-breaking numbers when the official results are announced in the coming weeks.

Steve Byrne, CEO of Travel Counsellors, comments:

“We are delighted to have acquired such a highly regarded and successful business, finding a company that is both culturally and strategically aligned to our people-led values and focus on customer care. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the entire Holidaysplease community; we are extremely excited at what this combination will mean for both businesses, our communities of travel experts, and our customers.

“We are incredibly passionate and focused on building a community of the very best travel entrepreneurs who are empowered by our platform to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Both businesses share incredibly similar cultures and this is clearly reflected in both brands’ excellent customer feedback and ratings, including consistently achieving 5-star ‘Excellent’ ratings on Trustpilot.

“Both businesses share outstanding momentum having each delivered exceptional growth in 2022 as well as record-breaking performances in January 2023. I am confident that this move will only serve to strengthen both business’ momentum and offers a safe, secure, and exciting future for all within the community.”

Charles Duncombe, Director of Holidaysplease comments:

“We are delighted that Holidaysplease is joining the Travel Counsellors community. Travel Counsellors is a business we have long-admired for its relentless customer focus, multi-award-winning proposition, and outstanding, technology-led growth.

“The opportunity to become part of such a strong, fast-growing business with significant growth prospects was incredibly compelling. I would like to thank our staff, homeworkers, franchisees and customers who have contributed to our success so far, and have no doubt that our community will continue to thrive and be cared for as part of Travel Counsellors. I am looking forward to working closely with Steve and the rest of the Travel Counsellors team to deliver our ambitious shared vision for the future.”

This news strengthens our position as the UK’s largest technology platform for travel entrepreneurs.

Interested in joining our global community of business owners? Get in touch with us here.