Strictly Business: The Travel Concept's Bianca Wassell

My journey in the travel industry started… when I went to college to do a BTec management course in tourism and hospitality, followed by an NVQ in air cabin crew. I always wanted to fly and see the world, but I applied for a few jobs and didn’t get anywhere, so I went and worked in retail, before ending up at British Airways with Tracy [Felstead], my now-business partner.

We set up our company… after sadly both being made redundant by BA in 2006. Tracy and I had worked together for about 18 months at that time. We had a handful of clients who said ‘wherever you go, let us know’, so we thought ‘why don’t we look at doing something ourselves?’ We started the business in October 2006 so we’re 15 years old this year. We were known as the two girls in the garage because we started at Tracy’s old house with an office in her garage. Now we’re both homeworkers.

We grew the business… organically. We haven’t spent thousands on marketing; we’ve just grown it from the handful of clients we had and by giving people good, personalised service – that’s our ethos. It’s all about taking a good brief, working with the best suppliers, booking the right holiday, all the way through to hand-delivering their tickets. About 97% of our business is now repeat bookings and recommendations. The other very small percentage comes from a couple of networking groups, a few ladies’ lunches that we do and supporting my daughter’s primary school.

The area of the business growing the most is… tailor-made holidays – those bigger Africa and Latin America trips that people can’t organise by themselves. By joining Aito five or six years ago, we’ve grown our supplier list to include more niche operators offering products and services that you can’t buy on the internet. 

I’ve adapted to the pandemic by… being as honest and flexible as I can. I’m a brutally honest person anyway and clients love that – they want you to tell them if a hotel is right for them. And in this past year, the more honest I’ve been with people, the more flexible they’ve been.

The supplier I have the strongest partnership with is… Aito. Our membership has been worth its weight in gold this year.