French Leave Holidays is reborn
French Leave Holidays, a French specialist which ceased trading in the mid 1990s, is making a comeback.
Robin Segal, whose first job in travel was with the company, has joined with John Markham to resurrect the well known brand.
The pair spotted a gap in the market while looking for a new business venture.
"France is surprisingly underrepresented in travel agencies and the response to our research indicated that there’s a healthy demand," said Segal, who was formerly head of market development for the Jersey Tourist Board and also worked at Rail Europe and French Travel Service.
"We thought about investing in or taking over an existing company but then, by chance, I saw that the French Leave Holidays name was available at Companies House."
The new French Leave Holidays offers experiential bespoke holidays including self-piloted canal and river boat holidays, luxury river cruises with AMAWaterways, self-guided walking and cycling holidays, golf breaks, family holidays and more.
It offers full financial protection with the Travel Trust Association and ATOL licence and will sell through the trade and direct.
The original French Leave Holidays was set up by a couple in the 1970s and in its heyday employed around 50 staff, produced multiple brochures and had a branch in London’s Fleet Street.
It was later bought by the Quo Vadis group and went into voluntary liquidation during the first Gulf war.
"Right now it is just the two of us with our new website but we believe there is really big potential for us to grow, once again, to become the ‘go to’ tour operator for France," said Segal.
Markham, who was formerly a sales director at Preston Travel Group, added: "B2B distribution is vital to our business model. Our product is largely high end and bespoke and there’s no better platform to communicate our holidays to clients than through the intermediary of a trusted agent.
"We view this a key route to market, and we intend to nurture this relationship with price parity and formulating a trade strategy."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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