Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin

Tour firm’s hard work pays off

-

A MAJOR Gold Coast tourism company has announced plans to go internatio­nal after taking home a major award.

LeisureCom Travel Group, which owns several brands including Discover Queensland and Hightide Holidays, won the Tourism category of the Australian Young Entreprene­ur Awards on Thursday.

Its newest brand, Global Explorer, is a project nine months in the works, according to founder Jon Tarrant.

“As a company, we’ve spent the past 10 years building our business to where it is now and to take it to the next level, we’ve taken on a major overseas investor,” he said.

“Our main focus in 2019 is going to be this launch. It’s a hybrid of our existing business models in the retail, online travel agency market and destinatio­n-based marketing.

“So on the back of Destinatio­n Queensland, we also market the top ‘travel to’ destinatio­ns for Australian­s, these being New Zealand, Bali, Fiji, Thailand and Hawaii.”

Having only recently celebrated the company’s 10th anniversar­y, Mr Tarrant said the new brand and the award is a chance to see their hard work come to fruition.

“We weren’t expecting it mainly because this is our first year being nominated,” he said.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Australia