Travel with Katie Butler:

Katie Butler, Total Travel, writes: We opened on Saturday, May 25, bank holiday weekend, and I have to admit I was thankful for the break after!

The build up to opening day and the organising that goes behind it – I can only describe as similar to the build up to Christmas Day.

It was never in the ‘plan’ to open up a third shop, at least not so soon after our opening in Ossett last September.

However, after a shopping trip to Brighouse one day, I was amazed at what a lovely, bustling town it appeared to be.

The seed was planted and we did not look back.

I then started to visit Brighouse almost every day, at different times of day, and each time the high street was busy.

We found the perfect premises and before we knew it the deal was done.

Arranging balloon arches, food and drink, branded cupcakes on top of ensuring all systems are running in place, staff are looking their best, invites are sent out on time, newspaper photographers etc; can be somewhat stressful as well as exciting.

The most nerve-wracking part was the not knowing who and how many would turn up to the opening and of course we can never predict the weather.

I needn’t have worried about either as we were blessed with sunshine and the turn-out was overwhelming, with so many people popping in to take a look round the new shop and a lot more bookings than we could have hoped for.

Like I said though, all that organising just for one day, and at the snap of your fingers it is over.

We were also extremely privileged to have the Deputy Mayor of Calderdale accept our invite to officially announce our opening and cut the ribbon.

We also closed both our Heckmondwike and Ossett stores for the morning as the staff were keen to meet their colleagues and enjoy the celebrations.

Myself, and the staff at Heckmondwike, will remain at the Heckmondwike store going forward and we have a brand new set of experienced staff in the Brighouse branch.

So, don’t worry we are most certainly not relocating, and your familiar faces in both Heckmondwike and Ossett will not be changing.

Late deals departing within the next 12 weeks remain extremely strong and once again accounted for a huge amount of our new bookings.

In fact June remained the top-selling month to depart and last minute holidays accounted for 38 per cent of our new bookings, a slight increase on last week.

This week also saw a shift in top-selling destination with new cruise bookings starting to slow down and beach destinations taking top spot, Majorca and Turkey being the best sellers for last week.

We have been lucky enough to grab 2 places to attend a ship visit in Liverpool and both Leanne and Alison will be getting familiar with Princess Cruises ‘Royal Princess’. I look forward to hearing all about it.