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From the Costas to the Caribbean and from operator collapses to the birth of winter travel – Sue Cobley, owner-manager of Sketty Travel, Swansea, traces the highs and lows of 42 years in the industry
I just knew that being an agent was the job for me. I left school in 1972 and shortly afterwards my mum showed me an advertisement in the South Wales Evening Post for trainee travel agents with Couch Travel. Of course, I couldn’t have known that 42 years later I would still be selling holidays and running my own company. But what a different world it is.
In 1972, there were only a handful of operators offering flights to the Spanish Costas. El Arenal, Benidorm and Lloret de Mar were the favourites and back then they were seen as quite exotic. We soon began to take en suite bathrooms and almost guaranteed sunshine for granted. Bathing in seawater that didn’t threaten hypothermia was an unimaginable treat for those of us from south Wales who can barely see the water when it retreats so far out at low tide.
It was not always plain sailing. Arrangements for travel could be complicated and time-consuming for agents. Some of you will remember the airline tickets that had to be handwritten and were unique to every airline. We had a security safe full of these self-carboning documents, and woe betide the travel clerk who made a mistake and had to rewrite it on a new one.
Before we reached for the tickets, we had to haul out the ABC flight manuals. It was so thick and heavy it would take both hands to lift it off the shelf and the font size was tiny. Thank goodness the computer age arrived in time because my eyesight would certainly not allow me to read it these days.
The 60s were the dawn of the Jet Age. We were still flying in de Havilland Comets – certainly no wide-body jumbos for the tourist trade. Even cruising was quite basic compared with the present-day floating cities. I remember a Soviet line called CTC that brought cruising to the masses. However, it was not the sophisticated and slick operation we have come to expect in the 21st century – the waiters onboard often doubled as key members of the entertainment team.
Winter holidays were considered a radical concept at first. They were introduced by Thomson in the early 70s, and four days in the winter sun of Majorca cost less than a week’s wages. Short breaks behind the Iron Curtain with three days in Moscow made us feel like true jet setters. Even so-called mini cruises to northern Europe – which in reality were round-trips aboard a pretty standard car ferry - became part of our range of holidays.
Brochures on the shelves in the 70s were more diverse. Do you remember Lyons Tours, Clarkson, Horizon, Global and Yugotours? I especially enjoyed the SunMed brochure with its uncharacteristically honest appraisals of resorts and hotels. For example, one hotel manager was described as being uninterested in his guests, probably as a result of inebriation. Brutal but so entertaining. Even when the countries have remained more or less unchanged, we have had to change the way we describe many destinations. Peking has become Beijing, Ceylon is of course now Sri Lanka. There is no Soviet Union, and of course there is no more east or west Germany.
Those were pioneering times for operators. The first major collapse happened overnight in August 1974, when Court Line went bust and thousands of people were being rapidly repatriated to the UK. I was in Benidorm at the time and vividly remember walking on to the beach to find it strangely deserted, when the previous day it had been almost standing room only. My holiday became more tranquil but was otherwise unaltered, as luckily I was with Thomson.
Bulgaria became the new cheap destination. In the late 70s, you could return from holiday with more spending money than you took out. In this communist state, the exchange rate was so unrealistic that the waiters would emerge from the bushes that surrounded our hotel to offer 20 times the going rate for our wonderful hard currency. Who would have thought our grubby pound notes would be so desirable? We actually didn’t need “real money” because the hotel issued us with vouchers that we could exchange for all meals taken in the resort’s restaurants and hotels. Was this the start of all-inclusives?
I remember the excitement when the annual British Airways Breakaway brochure was published. Agents could apply for trips at minuscule prices. One lucky staff member hit the jackpot with a trip to Washington, flying in Concorde. I was green with envy.
My first educational was to Athens with Olympic Holidays. That led to so many firsts for a terrified 17-year-old: travelling on my own by sleeper train from Swansea to Paddington – they didn’t tell me it was in a shared compartment when I booked it. I crossed London on my own when I didn’t even like getting taxis alone in Swansea. In those days, they called every flight over the Tannoy, thank goodness, so I was spared the ordeal of standing like a nervous meerkat watching an ever-changing flight board.
At that time, the Caribbean came within many people’s reach. Most people had never heard of the Dominican Republic, let alone realised that it was in the Caribbean. I bet some people were shocked when their flight lasted five times longer than their customary hop to the Costas.
As the 80s loomed, the industry continued to adapt and grow. Freddie Laker’s Skytrain brought transatlantic travel within the reach of the masses and even introduced us to the wonders of Florida. Who knows if we would ever have seen a Disneyland in Paris if we hadn’t first experienced the joy of the Florida resort?
Now there are unimaginable numbers of people flying across the globe. Who would have thought that Vietnam would become a holiday destination for us when, in 1972, the only large jets flying over that area were American B52s dropping bombs.
The way we book our holidays has also been transformed. The internet allows people to compare, choose and confirm bookings to practically any destination. Of course, these changes have seen the demise of many high street agencies, squeezed out by the loss of trade to the directly booked low-cost airlines and hotel comparison sites.
So why does Sketty Travel continue to thrive today? There is no single reason, but we offer a fabulous service, an impressive knowledge of the world and its destinations, and of course there is the Abta guarantee. Whatever it is that we are doing right, it must be working because my customers, many of whom have become friends over the years, keep coming back time and time again.
