Cannot believe this is now nearly 5 years ago….we had a great evening on a Thames river boat. Here’s an extract from Magazine Thame Out.

The travel company that is still thriving

When Bryony Hordern set up Tickets Anywhere, some 25 years ago, it was in a small, rented office next to a Hertfordshire pub. “I had a desk and a phone,” Bryony recalls, “and that was about it.” Tickets Anywhere have come a long way since then. Today, Bryony’s travel company has just celebrated its 20th year in Thame and is still growing. Looking back to those early days, Bryony muses on the reasons why the company took off in the way it did. “I started out with a bucket shop basically,” she says. “But, more importantly, I started out with a business philosophy. Planning a holiday, or a trip, can be quite stressful. I wanted to make travel not just as easy as possible for people but enjoyable too.”

It is an approach that holds as good now as it did 25 years ago, despite the changes to the travel industry brought about by the advent of the internet. “The internet has certainly been very effective for booking holidays,” Bryony says, “but it is also, ironically, rather impersonal. Here at Tickets Anywhere you deal with a real person, someone who will sit and listen, someone who will know how best to organise the details of your holiday. Someone you can call at a moment’s notice should you need any advice or anything confirmed. Book a holiday online and you are on your own. Book a holiday with us, and there is someone with you all the way.”

Bryony is justifiably proud of her staff, people, she feels, who have been instrumental in the success of Tickets Anywhere. The respect, it appears, is mutual. In return for being a considerate, personable employer, Bryony has been rewarded with the sort of loyalty that would be the envy of most firms. “One of my team has been with me from just after we re-located to Thame,” she adds with evident satisfaction.

The move to Thame came after Bryony met her husband and decided that the town would provide a more central business base. First came premises in Swan Walk, then the offices in Greyhound Walk. “Being in Thame provided a real platform for us,” says Bryony. Another platform has been Bryony’s willingness to adopt an imaginative take on travel planning. At the moment Tickets Anywhere is running a special programme which shows how, by switching a day here, a flight there, an airline here, people not only can go on their dream holiday but can save hundreds of pounds into the bargain. “Planning and knowledge are everything,” explains Bryony.

Tickets Anywhere is equally imaginative about its social role, selling tickets free of charge for Thame Players. Bryony’s customers may travel to the four corners of the earth, but it seems the company that helps smooth their journeys is firmly rooted in its local community – and looks all set to be so for the next 20 years as well.