DEREK KEOGHof Group Travel International describes his day
MY OFFICE IS a 1km from my house in Donabate, so I can park at the office and walk my son, Peter, who is seven, to school.
I set up the business eight years ago and worked in group travel before that since 1991. I love the diversity of people you get to meet. I also love military history and that’s something we specialise in. This week I’m getting ready to travel with a group on a second World War battlefield tour. This weekend marks the 66th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
I’ll travel four or five times a year with groups and about the same number of times annually on recces for new trips.
The first thing I do each day is respond to emails and then it’s on to the telephone talking to clients, tour leaders and tour guides, putting together itineraries. The trips we run regularly are easy enough to manage but customised tours are very labour intensive, so there’s a lot of co-ordinating and double checking.
We get a mix of individuals and associations looking to book trips. For our military history tours many are fathers and sons, going to visit the Somme or Flanders Field Museum, or to experience the last post ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres.
People forget that 200,000 Irish people fought in the first World War and, I believe, 56,000 people with Irish passports or birth certificates fought in the second World War. It’s not something that gets any recognition at all but, to me, places such as the Normandy beaches are important because they represent the complete and utter fight for freedom that was the second World War.
My own favourite site is the American Museum at Omaha Beach, which is remarkable. Pegagus Bridge is very moving too. Six wood and paper gliders – engines would have alerted the Germans – crash landed there in order that the Allies could take the bridge on June 6th, 1944.
LUNCH IS AT the coffee shop across the road, if I’m lucky, or not at all. In the afternoon I’ll be working on marketing campaigns or talking to our tour guides and maybe putting them in touch with the group travelling. I’m on the road a lot going to meetings, finding out from groups what they want from their trip and, when it’s organised, getting them to sign off on the itinerary.
We are very lucky in that 70 per cent of our business is repeat business and the majority of our groups travel with us every second year.
I get the most amazing letters from clients, particularly on the military history tours, from people whose lives or family were touched by war in some way. I keep them all.
I’ll finish up at 7.30pm and go home. If I’m reading in the evening it’ll most likely be military history, anything from the American Civil War on.
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In conversation with Sandra O'Connell