Barrhead to open more English stores and ‘continue expanding’

The new stores – in Halifax and Plymouth – will open “in the next few weeks” and form part of the pre-Covid growth ambitions of parent Internova Travel Group (formerly Travel Leaders Group), which acquired Barrhead in February 2018.

“You’ve always got to look forward. It’s been a great time to think about the business and plan for the future,” said Dobson on Monday (2 August).

“Both locations are new to us and were part of expansion plans before Covid - we’d signed leases but not actually been able to open them yet.”

Dobson was speaking prior to an event in London which saw Barrhead staff reunite with US-based counterparts from Internova, who had flown to the UK to celebrate the new quarantine exemption policy for fully vaccinated American arrivals.

“We’re extremely excited we’ve got to this stage after 16 months. What we need now is for the US to open up and reciprocate,” she said.

“I think it’ll be great from an inbound perspective and it will give some consumer confidence – which is great because that has really been lacking due to constantly changing restrictions and rules.”

Calling the day “momentous” as the travel industry continues its recovery amid Covid, Dobson used the occasion to call on the Scottish and UK governments to offer “more stability” to the sector.

With Scottish school holidays soon ending on 16 August, she labelled the current summer season “a write-off”, although described “some late bookings” coming in from English customers.

“Nowhere near where anybody needs it to be though. There is a real pent-up demand and next year is already doing extremely well. I think whatever happens this year it’s going to be a late market because things have been changing so constantly,” she said. “It’s all driven by what we hear from government.

Hope is not going to get you anywhere and we’ve been hoping for the last 16 months that things will improve. We need to see action now before we see any real boost in customer behaviour.”