BARRHEAD Travel has posted a solid set of annual results and signalled it is on course to reach £200 million in turnover.
The independent travel company, founded by Bill Munro in 1975 and run by his daughter Sharon, appears to have negotiated a way through patchy consumer spending patterns and said its turnover increased almost 21% from £128.9 million to £155.67m in 2012.
As a result, gross profit grew more than 20% from £15.1m to £18.2m.
While pre-tax profits fell back from £1.8m to £1.7m, Mr Munro said that was mainly because of investment back into the company.
He said: "We decided to invest heavily in shops and systems. A new business travel system means we can now transact in any currency which we couldn't do before.
"The business travel [booker] wants state-of-the-art technology and management information so they can control their own costs and make sure staff aren't just trying to collect air miles."
Glasgow-based Barrhead opened 15 new stores in the financial year creating around 150 jobs.
It said investment in its portfolio of travel websites and Apple and Android apps for mobile devices also contributed to sales growth.
Mr Munro said long-haul, cruises and business travel were the areas of major growth.
Barrhead is also seeing growing interest from other companies keen to licence its customer relationship management and booking software platforms.
He said: "The sustainable business is long haul and cruises where people are not comfortable booking it themselves and want to speak to a travel agent.
"We won our biggest ever business travel account which was for £7m in fees for a London-based legal firm with a lot of offices around the UK.
"Another part is the technology side. We have sold some technology to mid-counties Co-op and we have had a lot of interest from Australia and other parts of the world."
Barrhead indicated that it expects revenue to top £200m across 2013, with the acquisition of Larbert-based online business The Cruise Specialist in December last year predicted to add in the region of £30m in annual sales. Mr Munro said: "We are on target. At the end of August [this year] we were about 20.8% up in gross profit again.
"The problem we all have is this cannot continue year after year. The public spending power has not increased, it has actually diminished.
"Until wages start to increase then I can't see people spending more on holidays. There is a bit more confidence but there is not yet more money in people's pockets."
Barrhead, which employs 750 people, said it has plans to spend around £300,000 on new stores across Scotland and the north of England in the coming months.
Mr Munro confirmed the company is keeping an eye on major retail schemes including the extension at Braehead.
However, the difficulties of filling retail space in smaller towns is also leading to opportunities.
He said: "We are in constant contact with one or two of the major centres where we don't have a presence.
"We are also able to look at places like Greenock and Dumfries where we have taken stores.
"In the past we would probably not have done it as it would not have provided enough sales and profit. Now we are able to go into these places at much reduced rentals."
A trial with mini-branches in supermarkets is ongoing with new signage being arranged in Sainsbury's.
Mr Munro said: "The one in Bearsden where we are in the car park at Asda works very well but Sainsbury's [at East Kilbride] has been slower. We are talking to Tesco as well and looking at possibly doing something in Inverness."
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