Directors Tricia Rickerby and Leanne Miller opened the Whitehaven store in January 2015, with a plan to achieve £1 million turnover in its first year.

However it ended up hitting £3 million, and 22 months later sales are currently up 50% year-on-year.

Due to their success, the pair now plan to open a second shop on January 3 in Dunmail Park, Workington. Like the Whitehaven store, the second shop will be a managed service travel partner of Barrhead Travel.

The out-of-town shopping centre has free parking, and the store will be open seven days a week as the business partners work to maximise the firm’s profits. Rickerby said they would also “quite possibly” open another store in the future.

The agency, which made it into the final five for the North-West region in last year’s TTG Top 50, will hire four staff for the new branch – three full-time and one part-time – while Rickerby and Miller will split their time between the two premises.

Since opening last January the business has gone from strength to strength, scooping a Jet2holidays award for Best Newcomer to the Market last year, as well as New Business of the Year at the local CN Group Business Awards 2016.

Rickerby and Miller had both been in the industry for more than 20 years prior to embarking on their own venture – the former for Co-operative Travel and the latter for Thomas Cook.

“We started out just me and Leanne full-time, with two part-time staff,” Rickerby told TTG. “The business has done much better than expected and every month we seemed to be hiring a new staff member to keep up with demand. We took a decision to invest in staff specifically as customer service is so important.”

The opening of the new store will take the business’s head count to 14. Rickerby continued:

“Our agency is proof that the idea that high street agencies are over is not the case at all.

“We do get a lot of customers who have looked on the internet, but nine times out of 10 we can price match.”