Oasis Travel, Lisburn Road, Belfast

A cosy shop, located in affluent South Belfast, sees its fair share of high-profile clientele. Perhaps one of the team’s best customers is The Fall actress, Seainin Brennan, who lives nearby. Her praise of the agency, shared with an audience of 8,500 Twitter followers, has resulted in increased footfall for the branch and a number of high-value bookings.

The five-strong team’s excellent customer service has proved them worthy as one of Northern Ireland’s top agencies too. A perfect example was when store manager, Heather Martin, went above and beyond to help an elderly couple who were due to travel to Majorca. The couple got the news that their flight was delayed and became very distressed. Heather managed to call in a favour with the airport and move the couple into the business lounge. After a lot of toing and froing, she also managed to secure the couple’s compensation for the delay.

It is commonplace for the team to request personal touches in-resort too, from requesting bottles of champagne for honeymoon clients to bumping passengers up to business class.

The team ensures its excellent product knowledge is up-to-date through the completion of webinars, attending supplier events at least once-a-month and securing online training badges. Any information gleaned is then logged on the company’s system and the team has face-to-face catch ups when they can.

In-store events help to drive business growth too; a Silversea Cruises afternoon resulted in a total of £12,500 in bookings made in the following days.

Oasis Travel’s Facebook page is managed by the head office in Bangor, but the Lisburn Road branch has raised its profile locally by having deals showed by a Facebook page for local businesses in the area.