Dawson & Sanderson considers locations for high street expansion

Travel agency chain Dawson & Sanderson is assessing locations and opportunities to expand its branch network in its north of England heartland.

The agency has 20 high street branches in an area which stretches from Doncaster up to near the borders of Scotland and from Hull across to Carlisle.

Managing director Annelene Hutton, appointed last September, could not give firm numbers for the planned expansion but said: “We have highlighted a number of opportunity areas and are assessing those locations.”

She said the chain already had a “really good reach” geographically and was likely to open new branches within the same area rather than extend to new parts of the country.

Speaking on a Travel Weekly webcast, she said: “There are still opportunities in that area to do what we do well, and with a known brand. If we started pushing outside those boundaries too quickly I think we could struggle because nobody will know who we are and won’t know what we’re about.”

The group has already restructured its retail division, splitting the branch network in half and appointing regional managers to run 10 shops each. The managers report into retail director Jan Fawcett, and will be further supported by a training and development manager.

Hutton said this new structure was being trialled but said it would enable staff to be better supported.

“It was a very flat structure and everybody was reporting into Jan [retail director]. That’s a huge challenge and you can have people feeling quite alienated. It’s difficult to get hold of somebody for support when you’ve only got one person to go to. So we’ve actually just done a complete restructure,” she said.

She added: “We will see how that goes and if 10 shops are too many, and they’re finding that a challenge, we’ll obviously look again and reach out to some of the other candidates to split it into three.”

Other changes that have already been made include the introduction of a social media sales team. This aims to improve the way the business sells holidays via social media, which was previously handled just by individual branches.

Hutton said the move meant the agency now had a more balanced approach to promoting deals via social channels, with both its new team and branches working together on social media sales.

“We didn’t have a core team of people to focus solely on that [social media]. We have brought people in externally for that. It’s a different type of selling,” said Hutton, who added: “It’s going really well. We’re starting to see that click and response.”

Hutton hinted that another team, specialising in luxury, would launch in the coming weeks.