How Marion Owen established a successful Yorkshire travel brand

But all this changed at nine-years-old when, after just two flights to Spain, she was bitten by the travel bug.

And now, after more than 40 years in the travel business, she’s celebrating 30 years of her own business Marion Owen Travel, which despite the challenges caused by the Covid-19 continues to fly due to Marion’s outstanding motivation, passion, and commitment to customer service.

Marion remembers how the business started.

She says: “I decided I’d be a Travel Agent when I was nine. After the second time I went on an aeroplane to Spain I realised I didn’t want to be a hairdresser anymore, I was going to be a travel agent.

“I’m a bit of a determined lady and so I’ve seen it through, and I’ve now been in this industry for 43 years. I think the problem is, I have such a busy lifestyle I don’t have time to get old!

“I did plan on retiring when I was 50, but I don’t know what happened!”

She continues: “Obviously I’d worked for other people before setting up Marion Owen Travel, so I’d got a lot of background.

“The Automobile Association (AA) closed all its travel agencies where I happened to be a manager so that’s when I went self-employed.

“I come from a long line of self-employed family, so I think the fact that I’d been brought up in that sort of environment meant it wasn’t a scary thing to do.

“I’ve got to say I’m very passionate about this business. It’s not just work, it’s my life. If I wasn’t sitting here working, I’d be away travelling.

“I’m just travel through and through and through. There’s always somewhere else I want to go and another adventure I’m looking for.”

The business stepped up a gear when Marion spotted a niche for quality no-flight holidays.

She explains: “If you take us back 14 years, 85 per cent of our business was cruises. We were a big cruise agent, and still are.

“By now I must have done about 180 ships on rivers and oceans. Cruising was very big for us with tailor-made packages.

“But we had a lot of people who didn’t fly. I’d been doing river cruises across to the continent as groups and then I realised that these people wanted quality UK holidays as well, and continental holidays which weren’t competing with everyone else in the marketplace. They didn’t want cheap and cheerful hotels, they wanted something of quality to travel with like-minded guests.

“So, in 2010 I took on my own tour operators license to operate a small coach programme which I still do.”

And it was Marion’s decision to take to the wheel that kept the company driving forward during the pandemic.

She continues: “In 2010, I had no idea what was going to happen in 2020 and when all other travel agents ground to a halt, that gave us the opportunity.

“As soon as the Government let us get out there and go anywhere whether it was for a day or whatever we put something together, it was never advertised to the public, only to our database, and we travelled.

“Obviously, we needed to make some money. I’ve had a coach licence to ten years.

“Mainly I got that licence so that if the driver was ill, we had an extra driver. Also, we don’t like to have to make forced stops at a service station. We can just have a quick toilet stop and change drivers.

“I was never meant to go out there and drive tours of my own, but when you haven’t got any income and you can suddenly carry 18 people on a 32-seater coach then you drive it yourself, you take it for the team, and you make some money. So that’s what I did.”

She adds: “Every year you think you never had to work this hard before. When Cruise & Maritime Voyages collapsed in 2020, we had 93 bookings and more than 200 people.

“The problems with the ash cloud in 2010 were minimal compared to this because business never ground travel to a halt.

“People were still travelling, and the wheels were still turning.

“We only make money when clients travel yet I was working 24/7 to manage everything for people who had already booked and couldn’t go anywhere.

“Every time the government said we were allowed to operate I sent an email to our clients and we organised a trip with me driving the coach. We had Zoom meetings to keep people in touch and update them on what we were doing. That’s how we kept afloat during the pandemic.”

Marion has seen the market starting to pick up after the challenges caused by the pandemic.

She says: “People are now saying look we haven’t been able to travel for two years so we’ve got our holiday money and we don’t know what’s around the corner, so we want to get this bucket list ticked off.

“Cruising is still popular. We had 27 people do a Norwegian cruise in June. We’ve got another Scandinavian one going out in a couple of weeks’ time. I escorted a river cruise at the beginning of July which came out of nowhere.”

She continues: “What was happening was the tour operators would release the tickets, we’d do all the paperwork, and it could change three times before the passengers went!

“So, we were just redoing everything and wasting so much time and resources.

“Now there’s the confidence to release tickets and documentation further in advance of departures.”

With her long involvement in the travel industry, one of the main changes she’s seen over the years is the price in long haul flights.

She says: “Even going back just a few years, you could get some very good deals and a trip to Australia would be around £1,500 per person.

“We recently had someone who travelled with us four years ago.

“Due to the pandemic, they hadn’t had a holiday for a few years and wanted to repeat the Australia trip.

“When we priced it all up for them, this time it was going to be more like £3,500 per person.”

So, what does Marion believe has been the secret of the company’s success over the years?

“You’ve always got to look outside the box and say. ‘Right we’ve got a challenge so how can we change the business model?’”