Hays Travel is expecting to open a brand new store in January as part of an ongoing expansion of its retail network.
Chair and owner Dame Irene Hays revealed that she had expected to open two new shops before Christmas but added: “Sometimes negotiations are protracted.”
She is hoping to open one of the two in January 2025, but said she didn’t know ‘when we are going to get there’ with the second.
Irene said Hays’ retail network will continue to grow further, both through more acquisitions and organically via the purchase of additional premises.
“We have places pretty much across the country earmarked,” she said. Areas where Hays would like to open more stores now include south Bedfordshire following Jet2’s announcement that it will start flying from London Luton airport next year. She said Hays Head of Retail Jane Schumm had already ‘run the numbers’ and analysed the Luton airport catchment area to work out the ideal location for Hays to capitalise on Jet2’s new southern base.
“Whenever we are looking at where to invest in properties, we look at who’s flying out of which airport. Now we will get our property team on to it, like that,” she added, clicking her fingers, to demonstrate the speed with which Hays could act.
Speaking to Travel Gossip at the Hays Travel Independence Group and Homeworkers overseas conference, being held in Belek, Turkey Irene said she had a ‘wish list’ of other locations for new stores, but admitted it was sometimes a struggle to find the right premises at the right price, giving Leeds city centre as an example. “In some places we have been trying to open a shop for two to three years,” she added.
Hays now has just under 500 shops, including those it acquired from Thomas Cook in 2019, and more recent purchases such as Just Go’s 45 northwest branches, 16 Travel House shops in south Wales, three Holiday With Us branches in Lincolnshire and 19 Miles Morgan Travel shops in the southwest and south Wales.
The Thomas Cook retail estate, acquired by Hays from the liquidators, included the option to take over the leases for a total of 555 shops, but Irene said: “Some should have been condemned and shouldn’t have been open anyway, some were in such a poor state of repair.”
She said Hays chose not to open some others where the leases were old and ‘the towns had moved’, and also where Hays already had branches of its own.
Irene described some of the Thomas Cook shops as ‘vanity sites’, with high rents that Hays wasn’t prepared to pay. “They had them in big shopping malls where Hays Travel does not pay the same rents that Thomas Cook did. It’s my money, our money, we don’t pay that,” she said, giving the Trafford Centre in Manchester as an example.
“At the time, the Trafford Centre was a big standout, but it was pre-COVID, now you are finding some of these big shopping centres are having to lower their rents.”
Hays Chief Operating Officer Jonathon Woodall-Johnston added: “There were some shops that would just never have worked out and never worked out for Thomas Cook.
“Central London is probably an area where we are less visible, we don’t have sites in that area, but it’s because of the rents and rates. Travel is a low margin business so it’s really difficult to get the numbers to work.
“If the numbers don’t stack up we are not going to do that from a brand point of view because there are other ways to achieve brand awareness.”
