At Myriad Travel’s 10th birthday bash, guests were treated to a screening of A Good Year – and the film title seems fitting in view of the agency’s recent successes.

The Liverpool-based agency was named the North-West’s Top Agency in this year’s TTG Top 50 Travel Agencies, and its sales are on the up with a 40% jump year-on-year in 2016 and a further 12% increase this year.

“We had 150 attendees at our anniversary event in June,” owner Tiffany Woodley says. “We invited all members from our database that had booked in the past three years for an evening of champagne and canapes in our local Art Deco picture house.

“It was our way of saying thank you to our existing clients, while also hoping to ignite interest from those who hadn’t booked with us in a while,” she adds.

Going it alone

Things have come a long way since Myriad Travel was born in Woodley’s garage. “It was just me and a telephone back then,” she says.

Having worked as UK sales and marketing manager for Six Senses Resorts and Spas, Woodley already had good travel contacts, which spurred her to take the plunge and start her own business.

“My husband and I had always wanted to run our own business. I knew how to get others excited about travel, plus I had two young kids at the time, so it was easier to work at home with a family.”

Woodley joined the Global Travel Group, who she says was great at helping her establish herself in her fledgling stages. She recalls the early days of having to learn fast and make contacts. “It was stressful learning the systems and finding out which supplier to call for what. There was no Travel Gossip to help with queries then,” she laughs.

To grow her client base, which originally consisted of mainly friends and family, she attended local Business Network International breakfast mornings once a week, waking up at 6am to spread the word about Myriad Travel.

“For the first two years, that’s what we did, as well as doing the odd wedding show at a local hotel. Then we got bigger and did some larger wedding shows with Sandals.”

Despite issues that affected the industry along the way – airline strikes, tsunamis and ash clouds – Woodley’s business grew. “It got to a point where our house was becoming too full of brochures, so we moved into a retail unit in 2009.”

Six years later, Woodley bought her first shop in the village of Woolton. “At first it was just me running things, and my husband would dip in and out to help with the accounts,” she explains.

Expanding horizons

Myriad Travel is now a team of three, including Stephanie Winfield and Woodley’s daughter, Jess, who has been named one of TTG’s 30 Under 30 members for 2017.

“Stephanie specialises in family-friendly trips, including Disney. I’m the go-to for luxury and Jess is more of a long-haul expert,” Woodley explains.

Jess has also helped to diversify Myriad’s traditionally older audience by appealing to millennials.

“Jess is doing phenomenally well,” says Woodley. “She’s great on social media and at marketing to the 18-30s, who can sometimes be more nervous about parting with their money.”

The diversifying client base is also reflected in how the business promotes itself. “Ten years ago, Facebook and Twitter were just beginning and Instagram was nowhere,” says Woodley. Now, all three social media platforms play a big role in the company’s marketing.

“It’s important to be a bit quirky on social media to stand out,” Woodley says. She gives the example of a recent Twitter post about a campervan holiday in Ibiza which did particularly well for the agency.

The team also champions events, running one a month and producing an events schedule for the year every Christmas, which is distributed to their database and handed out to clients making holiday enquiries.

“When you first open a shop, your overheads are higher but the events have helped us hugely with securing business, as has the shop’s village location,” Woodley says.

The landscape of travel has inevitably changed in the past decade and Woodley mentions some of the main hurdles.

“Product knowledge is the main challenge for new agents starting out – it’s a huge learning curve. Plus you must engage on social media and be a bit different with what you’re doing there.”

She says the internet is another challenge. “People still think it’s cheaper, which is a perception they’ve grown up with. Most operators have price parity though, and agents can give that advice and specialist help that the internet just can’t.”

Despite the obstacles, Woodley says: “It’s been a good 10 years. The highlights were winning the TTG Top 50 award and buying the agency in bricks and mortar.”

With aspirations to open another shop in the future, long may those good years continue for Myriad Travel.