A high street agency has revealed the booking that ‘got them through’ the Covid pandemic – keeping business afloat amidst countless cancellations and refunds.
Janaway Travel was one of thousands of UK travel companies affected by the 2020 lockdown, which resulted in widespread job losses and economic ruin across the industry.
But fast forward to 2026, and the Camden-based agency has bounced back stronger than ever.
Over the past few years, it has won a number of accolades, including Agency of the Year at Carrier’s A-list Awards, and been shortlisted twice for TTG Top 50’s London category. Business performance has been equally impressive; in 2023, Janaway Travel’s sales exceeded pre-pandemic turnover.
Having recently celebrated its 66th anniversary, the agency is now reflecting on the most memorable moments of its tenure – including the single booking that ultimately saved its business during Covid.
“The enquiry came about 10 days before we went into lockdown," John Warrington, who runs Janaway Travel alongside Jane Redmond and Joanne Payne, told TTG.
“The client asked me to find them a place in rural England, so that if we went into lockdown, they wouldn’t be stuck in London. An escape-cation!”
After an exhaustive search and numerous site inspections, John ended up finding the ideal property. Located in the West Country, the gated house met all of the client’s criteria – from having spacious gardens to tennis courts and even an outdoor pool.
Janaway Travel has bounced back stronger than ever after surviving Covid
“Someone else was actually bidding on it, so I put down a deposit to guarantee we’d get it,” said John. “It was hard work to get, but they loved the area and the house. It was perfect.”
With an eye-watering monthly rental price of £100,000, the booking was also a huge win for Janaway Travel.
At the time, however, John had no clue the UK was on the cusp of its first official lockdown.
“We assumed Covid would last about three weeks,” he admitted. “So we just thought it was a bonus.”
But once the government announced widespread travel restrictions – bringing both domestic and outbound tourism to a grinding halt – John realised just how important that booking had been.
“The client stayed in the house for three months so in total, it was £300,000,” John said. “The commission on that literally got us through the first year of Covid. We had all that extra money in the bank when it was haemorrhaging out of our account from refunding for all the cancelled holidays.”
To this day, the VIP client has no idea that their English countryside rental had essentially kept the business afloat.
The booking remains one of the career highlights for John, who has just celebrated his 52nd year at Janaway Travel.
Over the past five decades, he has seen the store evolve from being a high-volume package holiday provider to a boutique agency focused on long-haul travel.
“In the early days, we had a four window shop on Camden High Street and we showcased beautiful model planes, like an airline store,” John recalled.
“People would queue outside on a Saturday morning with their brochures in their hand and cigarettes in their pockets, because of course, back then you could smoke indoors.”
In 2005, Janaway Travel moved a two minutes’ walk away from the high street to Arlington Road, as part of a strategy to focus on more tailor-made itineraries.
Today, the shop floor isn’t the only thing that looks different. Janaway Travel has seen major shifts in booking behaviours over the past 30 years, with an abandonment of “fixed duration” trips one of the most obvious changes.
“People will go away now for any amount of time – the rule of seven days or 14 days is out the window,” John said.
“Weekend breaks are much more popular today than they were three decades ago. You never went to Madrid for the weekend, you might have gone to Paris or Brussels, and only really in winter.”
Jane Redmond, who joined Janaway Travel in 1988, agrees that customers’ preferences have significantly evolved since her early days at the company.
“People want experiences now – even if they’re doing fly and flop, they want memories out of the fly and flop.”
What hasn’t changed, however, is its clients’ desire for a highly personalised service.
“I think this demand for face-to-face interaction has increased since Covid,” John said. “A lot of people don’t like doing things by themselves anymore, because they don’t always trust everything.”
He also says that agents should never assume all travellers are computer literate, noting the shop has clients in their thirties and forties who “wouldn’t even know what an app is.”
Rather than deride this lack of knowledge, Janaway Travel takes it as an opportunity to flex its high standards of service.
“We print boarding passes off and we set alarms for 3am to check clients in, we answer any question they have. We hold their hands throughout the whole journey, because we want to make life easy for them.”
As for the future of the legendary agency, John emphasises a cautious approach to growth – noting that more clients isn’t necessarily the goal.
“We don’t want to get too big because then we wouldn’t be able to give the same standard of service,” he said. “We want to be able to do it properly, and give our clients the time and expertise they deserve.”
