A whirlwind summer!

Well, autumn has crept up fast after what has been a whirlwind summer for us all at Travel Counsellors!

We started the season with a bang as we celebrated our ongoing success with our Travel Counsellors, head office staff and a host of suppliers at our conference in May. The event was full of celebration, friendship, connection and sharing of future plans. So much so we can't wait until the next one and have already set our dates for 2015!

Going into June we saw really strong summer sales which was really positive compared to industry reports of a flat trend. We've introduced some amazing new technology that is making life even easier for our Travel Counsellors to convert bookings, but not only that, their personal salaries are increasing too.

In July we celebrated hitting the big 60, as in the number of Travel Counsellors we have operating in the Republic of Ireland! We have seen lots of new agents join over the summer, many of whom have been referred to us by existing TC's, which is great as there really is no better recommendation than personal, first-hand experience. This is something we find on a daily basis where customers refer their Travel Counsellors to their friends and family, and now also extends to our Travel Counsellors doing the same!

As the sun shone in August, we had a record number of our Travel Counsellors and their families attend the Irish Travel Trade Fun Day in Wanderers, Dublin. Everyone had a ball taking part in the array of activities and games throughout the day, with Travel Counsellors sponsoring the event too. We are very family orientated at Travel Counsellors and believe the support we offer should extend to our agents' families, who we also count as part of the company, so events like this are great for everyone to come together and have fun.

And as if that all wasn't enough, we were really proud of our Irish contribution to Travel Counsellors winning the Queen's Award for Enterprise, the UK's highest accolade for business success, in recognition of the company's continued growth and overseas expansion. We received the award for International Trade due to the success of Travel Counsellors expansion in Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Dubai and most recently we've expanded into Belgium. The Award was announced on 21st April, the Queen's birthday and was presented recently to our Chairman David Speakman at a celebration in our Bolton office. All of our Travel Counsellors around the globe were also fortunate enough to be able to share in the presentation by watching it live on our internal company TC show - TCTV.

So into September! We are not busy planning an array of events and activities over the coming months to support our agents. This includes on the road training, exclusive Travel Counsellors fam trips to Sri Lanka and Argentina and not forgetting the event of the year - our global 20th anniversary conference in Manchester in mid November. No doubt it will be Christmas before we know it!