Gillian Bowler: Budget Travel founder a noted entrepreneur

Businesswoman Gillian Bowler has died, aged 64. A pioneering and highly successful figure in the Irish travel trade through her company Budget Travel, Bowler later became the first woman to chair an Irish publicly quoted company, Irish Life & Permanent plc.

Gillian Bowler was born in London in 1952 and moved to the Isle of Wight with her parents and sister at the age of 10. Her early teenage years were blighted by serious illness. She developed a kidney disorder, which doctors believed at the time was fatal. A hospital consultant told her that it was “up to her” as there was nothing more he could do. Bowler took him at his word and from that moment developed a fighting spirit that was to characterise her life.

She recovered, left school and completed her studies at a college in the evening, which led to a job in the local council. She stayed just three months, but she used the opportunity to develop an entrepreneurial edge, running dances for a public service union. The £100 a week she earned from this sideline contrasted with her £3 a week council salary.

Quick learner

Aged just 15, Bowler headed for London's bright lights and picked up a job at Greek Island Holidays. A quick learner with a good work ethic, she was tasked with setting up new subsidiaries and branches, including a Dublin office, which brought her to Ireland in the early 1970s.

She set up Budget Travel in 1975 on an overdraft of IR£100 in a basement in Dublin’s Baggot Street, with the help of her partner and later husband, Harry Sydner. Bowler had entered a male-controlled profession and later recalled that she felt hostility from established figures in the trade in her early days. Budget Travel found a winning formula, however, in providing low cost holidays to a growing market of sun seekers.

Bowler focused initially on Greece, cutting deals personally with accommodation providers. From a base of just 200 holiday-makers in her first year, Budget Travel grew to be a very successful and large business over subsequent years. Bowler attributed much of this to the company’s approach of providing very honest, informative descriptions of locations.

While personally charismatic, she was also viewed as a tough negotiator, well able to fight her corner in business. With her characteristic sunglasses on her head, Bowler developed a high media profile as a colourful and glamorous figure in the generally grey business climate of Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s.

Provocative campaigns

Never shy of courting controversy, she ran several provocative advertising campaigns that came in for criticism from members of the public and fell foul of the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland. The most effective of these ads featured a thong-wearing model with the line “Get your seat to the sun”. Displaying her wicked sense of humour, Bowler revised the banned ad with a strategically placed label on the model bearing the line, “Don’t get left behind”.

The resulting publicity was worth millions, she believed. In 1987, UK media and leisure group Granada bought 90 per cent of the business for €5.7m. Staying on for a number of years as chairman, she later pocketed a further €3.8 million when the business was sold to tour operator Thompson. Bowler developed wider business interests, including a portfolio of directorships of blue chip organisations such as Grafton Group and VHI.

She served as president of the Institute of Directors, where she was instrumental in forming a Centre for Corporate Governance in association with University College Dublin.

As chairman of State tourism organisation, Fáilte Ireland, she highlighted what she saw as a lack of competitiveness in the tourism offering.

Her selection as chairman of Irish Life & Permanent plc in 2004 represented the first appointment of a woman as chair of an Irish public company. IL&P became mired in controversy when it emerged that it had engaged in transactions that involved some €7.2 billion going from Anglo to Irish Life & Permanent (ILP), only to be deposited back with Anglo by ILP’s life assurance division at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. The board did not initially accept the offer of resignation of Irish Life and Permanent CEO Denis Casey but Casey was later pressured to quit by then minister for finance Brian Lenihan and was subsequently convicted of conspiracy to mislead investors and the public in relation to the financial health of Anglo Irish Bank in 2008. Casey has appealed his conviction and sentence.

Physically assaulted

Bowler was the only chairman or chief executive of a major financial institution to survive the banking crisis and eventually stepped down in December 2010. She was criticised from a number of shareholders at the company’s agm and was physically assaulted on the street by a pensioner in 2009.

IL&P, the biggest mortgage provider at the time of the crash, got a €4 billion bailout from the State. It was split, with the profitable life assurance and pensions arm, Irish Life, being sold for €1.3 billion in 2013, to Great-West Lifeco. The banking arm, Permanent TSB, is still 75 per cent owned by the State. The flotation of 25 per cent of its shares last year recouped €508.5 million for the public finances. The bank has now returned to profit.

In recent years, she returned to her business roots, founding online travel company clickandgo.com. Bowler enjoying entertaining friends and spending time at her second home in Wexford. She was a keen collector of modern art and served as chair of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

She is survived by her husband Harry and stepdaughter Rachel, as well as her mother, Josephine and her sister, Geraldine.