Duncan Wilson is the son of a Govan shipyard worker who, a decade ago, was heading the travel giant Airtours with 20,000 employees as it battled to escape meltdown.

As chief executive of Scotland’s most successful travel business, John and Hugh Boyle’s Direct Line, he had moved it from London to Glasgow – a feat he is about to repeat with Minoan Group. He has rarely given an interview.

“Everybody knew John Boyle, nobody knew me, it was the way I liked it,” says Mr Wilson, who is still good friends with the Motherwell FC owner, and whose top connections and 30-year track record have brought him “a following in the City”.

He hopes that following will help him achieve his vision of building AIM-listed Minoan into a sizeable Scottish-based travel business, by consolidating independent UK agents and targeting niche leisure markets.

Mr Wilson grew up in Barrhead, his first job was behind the counter at Barrhead Travel, and after being headhunted by Mr Boyle he rose rapidly to become UK sales director and then Toronto-based president of a new US operation for Owners Abroad (later First Choice).

After 10 years he went his own way, invested with others in a US venture Beach Villas, sold it to Thomas Cook, and stayed on briefly as commercial director.

“Then I hired a cruise ship, and John said what are you going to do with it?” The big players were parking their cruise ships in Palma, but the Glaswegian wanted to base his in Greenock and Liverpool.

Thomas Cook didn’t agree, so in 1995 he rejoined John Boyle, this time at Direct Holidays. He brought cruising to Direct, stepped up to chief executive, moved the operation from Putney in south-west London to Glasgow, and helped negotiate the £82 million sale to Airtours.

“John left next day, which was the deal, and I was tied for three years, which was also the deal, but that was alright.”

There was also an option pay-out for Duncan Wilson in seven figures. But he cemented his industry reputation by trebling Direct Holidays’ profits in his five years at the helm.

Promoted in 2002 to UK chief executive and main board director at Airtours, Mr Wilson helped steer the ailing craft through the post-9/11 and post-Enron storms.

He recalls: “It was a torrid time. Some revenue recognition policies that had been accepted by the auditors for the past 17 years were disallowed. The company was in real jeopardy.”

Mr Wilson was 43 when he bailed out of Airtours, then My Travel, in December 2003 as the company began to see daylight.

“It was a very stressful time,” he recalls. “We had 30,000 employees worldwide: 30,000 mums, dads husbands and wives whose mortgages depended on the plc board seeing it through and getting to the other side – that did keep me awake at night.

“The plc office was in Manchester, the American office in Florida and the North European office in Stockholm. My life was generally going to Glasgow Airport on a Monday morning and getting home at eight on a Friday night, and my wife was saying ‘why are you doing this? You built these companies and we are relatively comfortable’.”

As 2004 dawned, Mr Wilson found himself in Pollokshields on a weekday at last.

“I have had the past six years at home, getting to know my children (Stephanie, now 21, Cameron, 19 and Georgie, 17) and driving them back and forward.”

But at 50 something had to give. “I decided 18 months ago we were going to have one more run round the track. I think there is an opportunity there that is not being addressed.”

Meantime the big four travel players had merged into two, and Mr Wilson had joined the board of Minoan Group, a company set up to exploit ownership of a massive tract of coastal land in Crete, originally valued at €300m (£258m) – and last month knocked down to €100m.

Mr Wilson was already looking to re-enter the market, and two years ago accepted Minoan’s invitation to become managing director and use it as his vehicle.

Minoan’s early target had been Globespan – just prior to it collapsing due to £35m in credit card payments being withheld by the bankrupt eClear.

“That was going to be my entry point into the market, we were in the middle of due diligence, and this black hole appeared ... it was an utter and absolute disgrace.”

But Mr Wilson is now in the process of piecing together his “jigsaw” of travel industry opportunities.

He says: “Consolidation has clearly taken place at the top end of the market but my experience of large companies merging is that one and one rarely equals two, sometimes one-and- a-half at best, more often than not five years later it sometimes equals one.

In my 30 years, there has always been an embryonic company coming along and doing consolidation at the bottom end, and the beauty of that is if you do it properly, one and one can often equal three.”

Minoan has already pounced on three thriving independent travel agencies in Scotland.

Mr Wilson says: “Tom King’s business has been going for 26 years, John Semple’s for 28 years, Willie Stewart’s for 40 years next month, between them they have 80,000 customers.”

He now plans to replicate the strategy in the north and south of England, bemusing some observers.“Many of my friends have said to me ‘why are you going back into travel, it’s dead now, everything is on the internet’ – which is an interesting thought but completely erroneous. We have signed a franchise agreement with cruises.com, the largest cruise seller in the world, owned by two American brothers who I know, and they turn over about $1.5 billion (£940,000) of cruising. What proportion of their business is actually transacted on the internet? Under 1%.”

Minoan is busy hunting similar deals, building a menu of leisure offerings in niche markets such as golf holidays to the customers it is busy acquiring through the agencies.