Barfield Travel, Newark - 17th July 2008
Situated in Newark, Agricultural Travel have been in existence for 50 years and have been with Tarsc for over 10 years, they are fairly unique in travel as they are three businesses in one featuring a retail high street shop in the centre of Newark with a TMC and specialist incoming farming tours division just off the market square.
The business supports 17 staff and is wholly owned by its working directors with farming backgrounds
Carolyne Cree is the Travel Director, herself from a local farming background, she has just returned from hosting a 2 week tour of livestock breeders from around the world visiting cattle shows and individual herds including visits to Belfast, Scotland, Norfolk and ending in Warwick.
This £3.2m business handles outgoing and incoming tourism using Tarsc software and has just completed a major upgrade to Tarsc version 8.
Travel Club Elite, Birmingham - 29th July 2008
Travel Club Elite and owner Colin Matthews are one of the first travel agents in the UK to install the Vertical Group’s Athena product.
Colin has worked in the travel business for over 38 years and has owned his own business previously called Travel Economy for 24 years, based in Yardley a suburb of Birmingham.
Travel Economy was one of the first travel agents to automate their back office using Tarsc and now renamed Travel Club Elite are the only general retail independent travel agent left in Birmingham city centre.
Located in the Paradise shopping centre with 5 staff Colin specialises in worldwide luxury activity holidays and is a top agent for Club Med, Mark Warner and Kuoni and for the first quarter of this year was top UK agent for Bales.
Colin has many firsts including one of the first to join Midconsort now called Elite Travel Group and one of the first agents in the UK to upgrade to Tarsc’s version 8 operating system which fronted by Athena and linked to Magic Professional gives him full CRM capability within a single system.
Colin recognises that customer profiles are important to his business and Athena will enable him to compare enquiry and booked business, “handling customers professionally is key to my success”