It’s never easy to relaunch your business in a new location and with a new name but the team at Vannin Travel have managed the transition remarkably well.

Tony Lawrence, his wife Tracy and Chrissie Nightingale, who make up the team at Vannin, used to run Regency Travel in Strand Street.

They made a real name for themselves there, winning a number of industry awards including one at Isle of Man Newspapers’ Awards for Excellence.

Sadly, Regency closed due to reasons beyond their control so the team picked themselves up and started again, doing what they do best.

That is giving their customers an individual, personal service when they come to choose a holiday, book flights or a weekend break.

Tony said: ’Between us, we’ve collectively been serving customers in the Isle of Man for more than 40 years and we are thrilled at being able to carry on doing that.

’The three of us have worked together for over 12 years so it feels more like a family than colleagues and I think customers pick up on this and find the experience more pleasurable.’

Their new agency is to be found on the ground floor at Tower House and, despite this being a less high profile location than Strand Street, Tony reckons that around half of their regular customers from the Regency days have already sought them out and resumed booking their holidays with them.

Tony said: ’I would like to thank them all for their loyalty and continued support.

’But this means that there are still a lot of our old customers who don’t know where we are so we would like to let them now and tell them that we are still very much in business.’

Being ’very much in business’ definitely means going the extra mile for you customers and the Vannin team go out of their way to elicit and respond to customer feedback when it comes to the holidays they offer.

An example of this is the direct flight they are running to Salzburg next February half term. This came about through a request from a customer and, although selling very well, there are still some seats available.

Tony says they are hoping to offer more direct flights next year and they will be looking for more feedback to help them determine which destinations their customers wish to travel to.

Currently the number one destination for package holidays for Vannin customers is the USA, specifically Florida and the team is already booking holidays there over next year’s TT, with families taking advantage of the extended break.

More immediately, trips to some of Europe’s Christmas markets are also popular. Vannin has one departing in early December for the Christmas market in Nice from just £259 for four nights and including flights from the island which are arranged with no overnight stays or Budapest at the end of November for the same price.

The team at Vannin can also help with finding accommodation for friends or family coming to stay in the island. The website www.isleofmanbeds.com lists hotels, B&Bs, self catering and even glamping and there’s online booking available there. If you have accommodation on the island that you would like to list you can do that too.

You can also find a link to Isle of Man accommodation and information on all Vannin’s upcoming holiday offers at www.vannintravel.com.