Can travel agents save Britain’s high streets?

The newest branch of Hays Travel won’t have any customers – in fact, you couldn’t book a holiday there if you tried. But it might just be its most high-profile opening, in a location visited by millions of Britons every day: Weatherfield, the fictional northern town setting of Coronation Street.

But the revival of the humble high street agent is no fiction: all over Britain, travel brands are opening physical stores in response to growing demand. Alongside charity shops, these travel agents are “propping up” Britain’s high streets, says Jacqueline Dobson, president of Barrhead Travel – which has more than 80 shops nationwide. And heaven knows, they need it: our high streets have long been in decline, and more than 6,000 UK shops have shut their doors in the past five years.

So why has the high-street travel agent fallen back into favour? Things have certainly changed since their Eighties and Nineties heyday – when around 90 per cent of all Britons’ holidays were booked face-to-face. According to Atol, the Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing scheme, more than 3,000 travel agents ran 4,500 branches nationwide, including Lunn Poly, Thomas Cook and Going Places Travel. You may remember their walls of colourful holiday brochures, their perm-haired staff and giant computer monitors – and the pleasing physicality of a paper airline ticket, or a hotel reservation on headed notepaper.

But in the 2000s, with the rise of personal computers and virtual retailing, travel agents went out of fashion – unable to compete with online’s stack ’em high prices. And their demise continued: by the 2010s, agents were in serious decline, a relic of an offline world.

But the pandemic was a wake-up call, as thousands of holidaymakers were left out-of-pocket by online companies’ inflexible refund policies, or stranded overseas with no support from an agent at the end of a phone. We quickly learned our lesson: in 2022, a study by the Travel Association ABTA found that 37 per cent of Britons were more likely to book with a travel professional than they were preCovid. The main reasons included up-todate advice (45 per cent), and the security of a package trip (43 per cent).

Coupled with the high street’s demise, growing demand for in-person travel bookings has presented an opportunity, says Richard Slater, owner of ABTA-member Henbury Travel. He recently relocated his business to bigger premises in central Macclesfield, tripling the size of his previous store on the edge of town: “I was able to negotiate heavily on the lease because the hairdresser that occupied it was closing down – whereas our business is growing,” he told Telegraph Travel.

Indeed, when radio presenter Chris Evans spotted a new Travelbag agency on his local high street in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, recently, he praised how it was “disrupting” the market by prioritising physical retail.

And that, it seems, is the key to travel’s retail bounce-back, says Jonathon Woodall-Johnston, chief operating officer of Hays Travel. “A holiday is a high-value purchase, both financially and emotionally; people want to book with an expert,” he says. It’s a steady hand while you’re bamboozled by choice online, and reassurance that you’re safe from scams. “Coming into a branch gives [customers] the confidence that someone is there to look after them, from booking through to travel and safe return home.”

In a world that increasingly replaces the personal touch with the chatbot or automated call centre, what’s not to like about the humble high-street travel agent? It’s the antithesis of online facelessness, a throw-back to simpler times – and perhaps a new cornerstone of the community, too.

Hazel Plush

iBack to the future: far from being consigned to the past, travel agents are making a welcome return