Kerry Golds: Rebel with a cause

It wasn’t just industry doubters Golds had to contend with. Travel 2’s Manchester offices were twice destroyed in IRA bombings.

In the first instance, the bomb was placed at the foot of its Shambles Square premises near the city’s Arndale Centre, a day she remembers vividly.

“Everyone was being evacuated from the buildings around us,” Golds recalls. “I phoned the police and asked if I needed to evacuate my staff, and they said no, as they were evacuating from a few doors down. I didn’t like the sound of that and decided to get everyone out.

“As I walked back from the office after calling my bosses in London to explain the surrounding businesses were evacuating and I’d decided to as well, the bomb went off. The tip-off was for the wrong street. I missed it by seconds.”

After the first blast, Travel 2 rebuilt the office, but then just three years later, the Arndale Centre was bombed again and the whole office building was decimated.

After a testing but successful nine years in Manchester, in 1997, Golds moved back to London and became operations director, overseeing Travel 2’s now three offices, and less than a year later joined the company’s board – aged just 29.

A takeover by US giant Cendant Corporation in 2003 saw Golds managing the relocation of the business to Glasgow, and a massive restructure.

“I opened Manchester and closed it – that was very close to my heart,” she says. “I’d been at Travel 2 as girl and woman for 21 years. It was time to try something else.”

In January 2007, she joined Western & Oriental as head of tour operations and later became UK managing director.

The business had recently floated on the AIM stock market in March 2006 and begun a period of rapid acquisitions. Golds chooses her words carefully when describing W&O’s approach.

“Their acquisition strategy was difficult because a lot of the brands overlapped with one another. Trying to expand smaller businesses – whose founders are what makes them – and make them bigger organisations made it quite difficult. They struggled, and in the end there was a delisting of the company.

“The strategy worked on paper but not in reality. During my time, we tried to rebrand and bring all these little businesses together under one roof, but by doing that you lost a lot of the brand equity that these companies had built.”

W&O’s travel business was sold off in 2011 – it has since been merged into The Inspiring Travel Company – and Golds was soon approached by A&K.

“I’d always admired A&K, the romance of [founder and chairman] Geoffrey Kent’s story and the brand recognition,” Golds says.

“I chat to him nearly every day and he still fascinates me,” she says of Kent, laughing.

And there are exciting plans for A&K on the horizon. Silversea’s Manfredi Lefebvre d’Ovidio’s Heritage Group swooped for a majority stake in the company in February, with the remaining 15% owned by Kent.

“Manfredi is involved with us already – asking loads of questions and bringing so many ideas about where the business can go,” she says. “I’d met him a few years ago on a TTG Luxury panel – little did I know he’d become our owner!

“A huge amount of investment is going to be put behind us; Manfredi is looking at all opportunities for our growth, in the UK, across Europe… We are looking at acquisitions as well as organic growth through additional sales and marketing.”

Growing its business through travel agencies is a big emphasis for Golds too.

“I’ve got a stronger trade background than I do direct-sell, so it frustrated me when I arrived [at A&K] that we didn’t really have any trade [sales].”

But with agent sales 58% up on last year, its 2019 fam trip budget doubled, new technology in the pipeline and Golds driving it all, the future seems golden for A&K and its partners. True to her name, it’s clear Golds’ passion for travel and business is still a highly valuable asset.

Career
Before taking her summer job, she was considering a career in law. “I do still find all of travel’s legal stuff fascinating,” Golds says.

Big time
According to Golds, the moment she “made it” was receiving her first batch of business cards at Travel 2: “I thought I’d really hit the big time.”

Work
Golds describes her relationship with PA Donna Hill, who has worked with her for more than 25 years, as “like a married couple”. “What she doesn’t know about me isn’t worth knowing,” Golds jokes.

Travel
Her most recent getaway was a short break to US capital Washington with a tour of its political hotspots. Next is an A&K trip with travel agency owners to the Galapagos Islands in October.