Don’t you just hate those people who always seem to be in the right place at the right time? You know the ones; stylish, good looking, intelligent and amusing, they just appear to effortlessly float through life and everything falls nicely into place for them.
I had a best friend at school exactly like that. Whilst my school days always felt like a hike up Snowdon on the grimmest of days dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, my friend was striding with ease through spring meadows, the wind at his back wearing the broadest of smiles.
Not only was he clever, but he also was good at sport, hysterically funny, had cool taste in music, and, with a strong resemblance to Morten Harket the hunky lead singer of 80’s pop band A-ha, my friend was extremely popular with the girls.
For this spindly, ginger-haired freckle-faced teenager, who was not as clever or funny, not as good at sport, did not have such cool taste in music and looked more like Alfred E Neuman than a hunky 80’s pop star, well it wasn’t hard to feel that life was not dealing the best of hands!
And post-School my friend seemed to just keep on easing his way through life. He did well at Uni, soon found himself working in his dream job and has gone on to have a very successful working life. And, of course, he has a wonderful wife and lovely children.
Right time, right place, everything falling effortlessly into place….. In actual fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
Everything that my friend has achieved has come as a result of hard work and, perhaps more crucially, being prepared to take a chance on what was never the comfortable option. Seeing the moment and seizing the opportunity, however uncomfortable that made him feel. However unlikely he felt it was that the door in front would open, he still knocked, and you know what happened don’t you.
You see the right time, the right place is a fallacy. It’s a lazy excuse for people that choose not to knock on a door or take the uncomfortable option. They may see the moment, but it passes them by and their opportunity is missed.
It’s 20 years now since Charles and I took a wild £6k punt on the idea of selling upmarket, expensive holidays on the internet thereby going completely against the entire cheap deal ethos of the world wide web at that time, yet here we are, two decades on with a business approaching £35million in annual sales and involving close to 200 people. Of course, the success of the business was not just about seizing that moment back in 2002, it’s been far from a gentle stroll through spring meadows ever since, need I mention the last two years for a start! We’ve had to work consistently hard to continually evolve and grow the business, spotting those opportunities and making them happen.
And right now is, without doubt, a big opportunity moment for travel. As we emerge from the incredible challenges that the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to our industry, it is obvious that the market is coming back stronger and more dynamic than ever.
In a recent ABTA survey, 62% of people asked said holidays abroad were important to them and there has been a big rise in people booking a holiday abroad in the 6 months from October 21 to now. And people are now 39% more likely than they were two years ago to use a travel professional to book their holidays.
Not only is the market hungry, it is hungry for advice, service and expertise which just happen to be the key pillars that Holidaysplease has been built upon, and also provide the foundation on which the exciting new growth of our Holiday Franchise Company franchisees is blossoming from. Could travel be your right time, right place moment right now? Why not knock on our door to find out! We’d love to talk openly and honestly about how our Holiday Franchise Company opportunity works and see if it would be right for you.
