Business depth

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As part of his new role Squirrell says he is eager to learn in depth about every element of the business, which is why he found himself on the road earlier this year visiting agents with sales rep Louise Sword for the day. “I got a totally new respect for those guys,” he confesses. “They’re fully on the go all the time. It was one of the first things that I did [on becoming managing director]. I thought it was a good way to understand the trade side, which is such an important part of the business.” Agents are so important to Titan, in fact, that Squirrell reveals the company’s agent business has grown around 60% in the past five years. In 2015 alone it paid out £4 million in agent commission, and this year it will have increased its trade marketing spend by 15%.

Overall, agents account for 30% of the company’s turnover – a figure that Squirrell claims is “not to be sniffed at”. In recognition of this, he reveals that Titan will be adding two new sales reps to its current sales team of five. By the autumn it will have five reps on the road and two in the office.

“They’ll be building on existing relationships and absolutely looking to develop new relationships with agents,” he says. “Agents trust our quality and they trust our service. That’s an important thing.”

Going for growth

While the company’s relationships with its employees and agent partners might have occupied his thoughts in his first six months, Squirrell says his focus is now firmly on growing the business.

“We want to grow the business, and we want the trade business to grow with it,” he adds.

“Bringing the staff back to Redhill, ensuring staff were happy – that was the focus last year. But now we’re fully focused on growing passenger numbers over the next five years.”

Plans include the introduction of new programmes and destinations such as Ethiopia, the Himalayas and Uzbekistan – all of which have been added for 2017, and the latter of which was a suggestion from one of Titan’s tour guides.

“He had been with a group in Burma that said they were eager to visit the former Soviet state. Uzbekistan had been on our radar but this gave us the prompt to get on and do it,” Squirrell says. “That insight from our tour guide was invaluable.”

The company now has more than 200 bookings for the tour.

And it is not just on its land tours that Titan will be offering new programmes. In April, the company revealed it would be chartering its own river ship, Serenade, on the Rhine and Danube next year – a move which Squirrell says has proved so successful that the company is now considering adding another ship.

“The charter has been a phenomenal success. It went on sale in April and it vastly exceeded expectations – some of the sailings are already full. Now we’re starting to ask the question – do we need to add another ship? It’s so great to have a ship that is ours, that we can control, and deliver the routes and destinations for.”

The season will last from March until October 2017, and Squirrell says it will “definitely be doing another full season in 2018”. “We will be thinking very seriously if we want to expand on that too,” he adds.

Value product

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Elsewhere, the company is also increasing its value offerings. It initially introduced the brand “Traveller, by Titan” last September, offering a collection of lower-priced holidays enabling more independence for travellers, but Squirrell says this proved “slightly confusing” for clients and the trade. Instead, the company is now focused on including these value offerings within its main brochures under the Titan brand.

“[Traveller, by Titan] was the chance for us to dip our toe into lower-value products. We’re not the cheapest escorted touring brand out there but we don’t ever try to be. We felt we could bring our expertise into a wider part of the market, and this showed us that we could,” he says. As a result, in July Titan launched Essential Collection.

“It’s not a separate brand, it’s part of Titan and will be featured in the brochures,” Squirrell explains. “The programmes will be shorter in duration and there won’t be any home pick-ups – we know that not everyone needs it. We have Essential Burma and Essential Japan – guests still get quality hotels but they’re slightly different, and might be further out of town. We have plans to launch a range of cruises as part of it, and a new South Africa programme.”

Asked whether the move was part of a plan to try and attract a younger demographic, Squirrell admits: “We have to recognise the escorted touring of today will be different in five years. People want a degree of flexibility – they want to be able to tailor-make things and choose where they fly to. I think our Essential Collection is more likely to attract a slightly younger age group. We want to be able to offer something for everyone.”

Titan is also seeking to innovate in other ways, including a “digitisation of the business” and the development of an app for customers.

“We launched our new website a year ago, and while we find that people prefer to buy their holidays from a travel agent, or picking up the phone, the use of web is still crucial to the business,” he says.

Squirrell insists though that he does not believe technology has replaced the need for brochures yet. “They still remain a crucial sales tool, but we need to make the process easier however someone wants to book – whether online, through an agent or on the phone.”

Andy Squirrell has certainly made a big impression on the business in his first six months as managing director. And with the operator expecting to have its most successful year to date in 2017, Squirrell looks likely to make Saga plc’s shareholders as happy as he’s making Titan’s staff and clients.