'You have to be ready for change'

Case study Tony Bond, travel agent and partner in Hyhohotels.com

“I had a travel agency in Raheny for 22 years,” says Tony Bond. “Before, it was about calling the airline and booking the flight directly with them.

“Everything was done from a book,” he says of pre-internet travel. “The airlines paid money to agents for every booking they made.

“Then from the late 1990s, they went from paying 9 per cent, down to 5 per cent and then down to 1 per cent and then down to nothing over a period about 18 months.

“The biggest part of the business would have been the package holiday; that meant queues outside the door from January,” he says, “but the internet changed all that too”.

Bond successfully adapted, and his agency was one of the first in Europe to offer online flight booking.

Then in 2009, recession hit.

Business travel

“We couldn’t get paid by a number of large Irish companies that had used us for business travel,” he says. “Eventually we got the money out of them but by that time, the banks had forced us to close.”

Reinventing his business, he diversified into tailor-made itineraries to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

He also became a partner in Hyhohotels.com, a hotel booking website.

“You have to see change coming early and make sure you are ready before it comes upon you,” he says.