The brand’s retail network will grow to a total of eight stores by the end of the year, with the opening of a shop in Llandudno, Wales, on December 9, followed by a launch in Market Drayton, Shropshire. The new openings will take the firm’s total number of staff to 35.

The firm, which already had two shops in Shropshire and two in Wales, also opened a branch in Newtown, Wales on August 29, and another in Nantwich, Cheshire, on Friday, November 11.

Director Helen Johnson, who launched the first Polka Dot Travel shop in Oswestry with business partner Philippa Wilcox in October 2011, told TTG the business had no plans to slow its expansion, with hopes to open another four stores next year.

The new shops to date have been within around an hour’s drive of Oswestry, enabling Johnson and Wilcox to easily support the whole network, although Johnson said going forward the catchment area would have to extend to an hour and a half’s drive.

All of the business’s new premises have been new units as opposed to existing agencies, which Johnson said worked best for the company.

Polka Dot Travel, whose Wrexham and Oswestry branches both won places in TTG’s Top 50 Travel Agencies last year, is an Advantage Managed Services member, and Johnson said the consortium’s help was “invaluable”.

“From a service point of view our team knows what’s expected of them by the owners of the company – we never get complaints about service,” she said.

Johnson added that the response from the community in Nantwich had been “great”, but that Polka Dot Travel had undertaken extensive market research before opening, concerned about the perception of travel agencies in the community following the closure of Global member Nantwich Travel last September.

Police in Cheshire launched an investigation after reports that customers had been left thousands of pounds out of pocket when Nantwich Travel unexpectedly closed.

Johnson said that she believed its premises had now been taken over by a different company, unrelated to travel.