Tanya Airey

TANYA AIREY is managing director of Sunway travel agents in Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. She says:

‘ EVEN though the f amily business is a travel agency, my mother Carole Furlong is not into going on holidays at all — isn’t that hilarious? She’s the sort of person who doesn’t really relax on holidays because she’s thinking about the flights. Everyone else in my family loves it but even as kids we’d have to beg her to go on holidays, she’s a real homebird.

The best holiday we ever had together was when I organised a surprise trip on a Silversea Cruise for my parents’ 40th anniversary ten years ago. It was a three-night cruise from Nice to St Tropez, Portofino and back to Nice. Silversea Cruises are top of the range. It’s a smaller ship and all- inclusive with beautiful food, champagne, the whole lot. What happened was they flew out to Nice first and I organised a hotel for them on the Promenade Anglais. I said, “We’re going to fly out and we’re going to bring you somewhere for a few days.” What my parents didn’t know was that my two sisters and their husbands were coming too. I got them to wait outside once we got to the hotel. My parents were in the lobby and my mother said, “I have to show you our room, it’s amazing.” When we came back down to the lobby, my sisters were there with their husbands and as soon as she saw them, Mam was so emotional she started crying. I then gave her the Silverseas silver box with silver ribbon and she opened it and found the tickets.

They’d never done a cruise before and I’d never done one either. She loved it so much that they’ve done river cruises since then, so I must have got something right!’