Usit Now chief executive Shane Nolan knows he has a challenge on his hands turning the company around but he believes he has the right people, he tells Colm Keena.
The lobby of the Usit Now outlet on Dublin's Aston Quay is a picture of how Ireland has changed in the past decade.
The students and young people gathered around a noticeboard and waiting their turn to buy airline tickets are from Africa, China, India, North and South America, all over Europe.
If you take a seat and listen, you hear languages from around the globe.
On the noticeboard there are advertisements for accommodation and jobs. The atmosphere is that of a crowded college coffee shop, with new students swapping information and advice.
Not only are the customers indicative of how life has changed in the Republic; so too are the staff. Usit employs people from 17 different countries in its flagship outlet and finds that customers come to the shop knowing that they will encounter fellow nationals there from whom they can buy tickets or ask advice of in their native language.
For Shane Nolan, the new chief executive of Usit, these are the sort of characteristics of the student and youth travel group which he believes are strengths which can be built on.
The travel agency has long been known as a good place to visit for long-haul flights and the word has spread among the Chinese and other foreign visitors who have come here to work and study.
There has also been a huge growth in recent years in student and cultural exchange programmes, another natural source of business for Usit. The company sends thousands of young Irish people to the US and Canada every summer on work exchange programmes, and in return brings a smaller number of US and Canadian young people here. Some of the young visitors end up working in Usit.
The company has hostels in Dublin, Cork and Galway, a hotel beside Christ Church in Dublin, and operates the student apartments in University College Dublin during the summer months when the students are away.
The company's dominant position in the student and youth travel market here could not prevent the Usit group's collapse earlier this year.
The group had just completed the takeover of a US student travel company in September 2001, when the September 11th attacks and the economic fallout sent the Usit finances into a tailspin.
The survival of the Irish business and its purchase by investors Mr Michael Tunney, Mr David Andrews and Ion Equity in June is something the new owners are proud of.
"About 20 per cent of companies that go into examinership survive," says Mr Nolan. "It's quite an achievement that the company came through it. Trading was surprisingly positive during the period, just 20 per cent off, so people still had confidence in us."
The new owners are understood to have made a cash injection of about €2.5 million in Usit, with additional finance also being made available. The company has a turnover of more than €55 million but profits are small if not negligible. "It's as near as possible to just washing its face," says Mr Nolan.
However, the state of the company did not prevent him leaving a good job to take on the role of chief executive of Usit. Mr Nolan spent most of his working life with Aer Lingus. He started working with the company, delivering mail, after he did the Intermediate Certificate.
By the time he left the airline he was its marketing director. In between, and with the support of the company, he'd finished his Leaving Certificate, studied marketing at the Dublin Institute of Technology, taxation at the Taxation Institute and completed a masters in marketing in the Smurfit Business school in UCD.
When Aer Lingus put its voluntary redundancy programme in place, Mr Nolan, then 40 years old, was prompted to consider whether he wanted to try something new.
He decided he did and, with a generous redundancy payment in his pocket, left his job without being sure what exactly it was he was going to do next.
At one stage he'd worked alongside Conor McCarthy in Aer Lingus. Mr McCarthy had later moved to Ryanair where he'd been involved in that company's initial expansion period.
In 2000 Mr McCarthy had left Ryanair to set up a consultancy firm which gave advice to such airlines as EasyJet and Alitalia on how to reduce costs and fares. Mr McCarthy asked his former Aer Lingus colleague if he wanted to join the consultancy and Mr Nolan took up the offer. For a time the two former colleagues worked together again, this time on a plan to set up a low-cost division of Aer Lingus.
Then he got a call from Martin Tunney. This was in June when the High Court was in the process of approving the takeover of Usit Now. The two men sat down and discussed the idea of Mr Nolan becoming Usit's new chief executive.
"The idea of getting the company back up and running again was an attractive one. It was a challenge but an attractive one."
For a time Mr Nolan was still working as a consultant while also getting to know the ropes at Usit but for the past month he has had his feet under the desk at Aston Quay on a full-time basis. "It's a good solid business. A good solid brand," he says. "Stop any 10 people on O'Connell Street bridge and ask them what Usit is and chances are they'll know."
By next year the commission Aer Lingus pays to travel agents for each ticket sold will be down to 1 per cent. A few years ago it stood at 9 per cent. The internet is a major player now in airline ticket sales.
"The role of the travel agent is changing and it's our job to change and to add products to the core market we are serving."
For Usit, that core market is third-level students. Usit has 19 outlets in Ireland, north and south, with two having opened recently in the Carlow and Sligo institutes of technology.
The company's outlets are both on campuses and on the high street and the brand is well known. However, a unique and unattractive aspect of having such a customer base is that it has a complete turnover every four years. This is one of the issues Mr Dolan intends focusing on while at the same time maintaining the core business with students.
He now wants to target the youth, under 26 market, thereby getting a few more years out of his customers before they move on. Usit offers special deals to everyone under 26, student or otherwise, and this is a message he hopes to get across through the use of advertising and marketing.
A third strength which Usit has is its experience in the independent traveller long-haul business, and again this is an area Mr Dolan is keen to target.
For people wanting to travel to India, Thailand, Australia, South America and Africa, the student and youth travel agency has flights, advice, insurance packages and initial accommodation advice to offer.
Its long-haul section on the first floor at Aston Quay carries a range of travel guides to almost anywhere on the planet people might be travelling to.
In the way young travellers coming to Ireland are referred to Usit and its hotel and hostels by youth travel counterparts in other countries, Usit refers people to hotels and hostels abroad where they can stay for a few days when they arrive in a new country and are orienting themselves. Arrivals packages are just one of the ways in which the company hopes to "add value" to the service it offers and thereby create new income streams. "One of our needs is to create income streams other than ticket sales."
A nice earner which Usit operates is the student work exchange programmes. Each year it sends 10,000 students to the US and Canada for the summer, while bringing a smaller number of students from those countries here, for working holidays. It also operates summer schools in Trinity and Queen's.
"These are all issues which can be built on," says Mr Nolan, "but the first phase is to put the existing business on a sound footing. When we have consolidated the student market, then we can go after the youth market in a systematic way."
Usit was an international business at the time of its collapse. The Irish business was taken over by investors. The business in Spain, Belgium and France was taken over by management.
The Irish business is not particularly profitable, says Mr Dolan.
"We are not making the return on the investment. We are not happy with the level of profitability."
Job cuts are not on the cards, he says. "We need to up our turnover and contain costs, ideally reduce them." If the business can be grown, the job cuts will not have to take place.
"We have a very motivated staff, very impressive, experienced people. They are a great bunch of folks."
Nothing but blue skies.
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