Print this page

Retail business

Running your own business from premises

So, you want to run your own travel business, you have a choice of running it from home or from High Street retail or call centre premises

There is an initial one off investment.

For this you would receive:

  • Best commissions in the business
  • ABTA protection for customers, and ATOL facilities*
  • The best travel technology , front and back office
  • Free Dynamic Packaging system with low cost flight finder, and access to exclusive dynamically packaged cruise holidays
  • Free PDQ machine & low credit card rates
  • Centralised payment of suppliers
  • Great Teletext rates, and information on other routes to market
  • Over 1000 suppliers
  • Access to human resource & marketing services
  • Dedicated support team based in the Freedom support centre in Stoke and at the end of a freephone number
  • Comprehensive one week training course (including accommodation) 
  • Regular support visits
  • Optional Foreign Exchange facilities
  • Low cost business insurance cover
  • Regional forums & annual conference
  • Backed by The Co-operative Travel

Running a travel business from your own retail agency

What sort of profits can you expect?

A rough guide. Travel products are generally high value products and large gross turnovers can soon be generated in a relatively short time scale.


In general your first year is spent building up the business and your reputation. Repeat business is the aim, and once you get people coming back to you, plus continuing to get new business, then growth happens. The compound effect of this is obvious and with hard work and perseverance, you can soon start to generate a meaningful turnover.


For example, to generate a turnover of £1m you need to make about 490 bookings p.a. (average 2.5 persons per booking), or put another way, just over 9 bookings a week. The average commission earned by Freedom members is around 13%, so your gross earnings on a £1m turnover would be approx £130,000. Out of this you would need to pay your system and management fees (not applicable in year one), your rent, rates, heat, light, phones, staff etc etc. What’s left is your profit.
Management fees are paid at the rate of 10% of your net commission (approx 1% of your gross turnover) with a minimum annual fee of £6,000. Also from year 2 your system fees will be deducted monthly from your net commission, the amount being dictated by the number of users you have.

Technology


Regardless of the size or type of your business TARSC can provide you with all the management, administration and accounting functionality that you need. Easy to use, flexible to your needs, constantly evolving to give you the most reliable and up to date management system available, TARSC is the product you have been looking for to help drive your business forward.

So what is TARSC?

TARSC provides you with all the management, administration and accounting functionality that is required to run a successful business. At the touch of a button TARSC offers you extensive reporting functionality including VAT, marketing, turnover, cash flow, commission, nominal and expense reports providing you with all the tools you require to plan and manage your business.

To assist you in maximizing user productivity TARSC also has the functionality of hand off integration with CRS systems, Viewdata and XML feeds.
Technical Information

Your TARSC system will be centrally hosted at our Head Office in Essex using the very latest IP software. This technology negates the need to operate and manage your own server. Back ups are completed on a daily basis and stored in a separate disaster recovery location, checks are completed 364 days of the year to ensure your TARSC server is up and running.

Server maintenance and updates are completed out of hours and new upgrades to TARSC are automatically released. For extra resilience the Vertical Group have installed external emergency generators. Multiple branches will benefit immensely from this platform. All branches access the one server, eliminating the need to poll and merge each branches data making the management of your branches easier, quicker and more efficient.

Key Features:

  • TARSC client documentation production is second to none and gives you the flexibility to personalise all required documents and letters.
  • Ability to email documentation from within TARSC.
  • Highest quality report production which can also be automated and emailed to you on a daily, monthly or yearly basis.
  • Full stock management of insurance, air tickets and brochures
  • Customer Mailshot facilities
  • Fully integrated accounting suite including nominal and expense ledgers
  • Facility to transact using multiple currencies.
  • Integrated Credit Card Authorisation.
  • Customer address finder using software provided by Royal Mail.