I want creative staff who retain a sense of humour

Nov 19 2008 by Tony McDonough, Liverpool Daily Post

Tony McDonough meets DREW FOSTER, owner of ITC Travel

IT IS the mark of a true entrepreneur that he or she is willing to turn their hand to anything to make a buck or two. Drew Foster, founder and owner of ITC Travel in Chester, has during his 64 years, been a teenage bookie, barman, nanny, motorcycle racing programme seller, disco manager and an executive with Marks & Spencer.

But it has been more than 30 years since Foster found his vocation in the travel business. He now heads a company which has an annual turnover in excess of £50m and employs around 150 people.

ITC specialises in organising holidays for the top end of the market – people willing to pay thousands of pounds for their dream trip.

Those “five star” trips are dealt with by a division of the business called ITC Classics. Others are ITC Sports, which organises travel to top sporting events all over the world, and caribbeanconnection.com which allows people to book holidays to the West Indies and tailor the trips to their own needs.

Foster got into the travel business in the early 1970s while on the east coast of England working for a Danish shipping company called Tor Line.

It sold group tours through special promotions with newspapers and he saw a business opportunity for himself.

In 1974, he set up an agency in Chester selling group tours to the Caribbean through a travel company called Clarksons, then a big player in the UK package tour market.

“They were offering two-week holidays to the Caribbean for about £110 and I did a deal with them to run their group travel,” said Foster.

“Unfortunately, about halfway through 1974, oil prices went sky- high and Clarksons went bust, having found themselves over-committed.”

That collapse left 35,000 people stranded abroad and another 100,000 customers who had already paid for their trips out of pocket. The catastrophe led to the creation of the Atol bonding scheme.

Foster added: “We had people banging on the doors wanting to know what was going to happen to their holidays.”

Luckily, most of his customers had only lost small deposits and the businessman set about trying to rescue his own operation.

“I went out to the Caribbean to have a look for myself,” he said. “Caribbean Airways had just started up out of Barbados, so I used them to set up a new service called Caribbean Connections.

“The prices were nearer to £200 and not everyone could afford to go, but a few did and I could see the tour operating game was going to prove to be a better bet than organising group travel.”

Through the 1970s and 80s, as package tours became cheaper, more and more people booked with Foster and the business grew from there. He expanded to offer holidays to other parts of the world and, in 1991, changed the name of the company to ITC.

“Although we were now offering holidays to other parts of the world, I continued to travel to the Caribbean and started organising special tours out there for people to see the cricket.”

Foster met June, his second wife, in Barbados and the couple have two children – Jodie, 17, and Adam, 14. He also has a 27-year-old daughter, Katie, by his first wife, Rose. After working in travel public relations in London, Katie has now joined ITC to set up and run the internet side of the business.

FOSTER was born in 1944 in West Kirby, Wirral, but spent his early years living with his parents and sister in Nefyn, in North Wales. They later returned to Merseyside, but those early years gave him a lifelong affinity with the town and he retains a holiday home there.

“North Wales has always been a big part of my life,” he said. “And wherever I’ve travelled in the world, I can still honestly say that Nefyn is my favourite destination.”

Foster left school at 18 and immediately headed to Paris, “just for the experience”. During a year in the French capital, he worked in bars, nightclubs and even spent three months working as a nanny for a local family.

“I think they took pity on me,” he said.

On his return to the UK, he joined retail giant Marks & Spencer as a management trainee in Chester and eventually ended up working in the company’s head office in Baker Street, in London.

“I spent five years at Marks & Spencer and it was a real education,” he said. “Even to this day, I still quote back things to people I learned then. So much so that people sometimes roll their eyes.”

HOWEVER, Foster felt constrained by the grey corporate culture and quit to spend a summer in the Algarve where he ran a disco.

During his early years, he also helped out at the famous Oulton Park motor racing circuit in Cheshire, which his father, Rex, helped found in 1952.

While in the Algarve, he met a Polish man called Andrej Olszowski, his future brother-in-law. Olszowski was then chairman of Tor Line and gave Foster his first start in the travel business.

Foster has seen many changes in the sector since then and he acknowledges the huge impact the internet has had on the business. He said: “With something like the internet, you can either fight it or find a way to benefit from it. Not all people are comfortable booking holidays online – 75-80% of our customers will still come on the phone to speak to someone at some point – but that is changing.

“We have invested more than £2m in new technology to get our online product to where it is now but we are not totally there yet.

“What we must not forget is that the personal services are terribly important – people still want to be looked after.”

Foster also acknowledges ITC won’t be immune from the effects of the downturn but believes the business can ride out the storm. He has had several offers for the business over the years but has resisted them all.

“People will still want to go on holiday, but someone usually paying £30,000 may just want to pay £20,000 and may cut back on some of the extras.

“I have had offers for ITC and of course you get tempted but I’m not ready to retire – what would I do with my time?

“We have a happy place and I want people who work here to have fun.

“It is important we be creative and to keep our sense of humour.”

Q&A

Age: 64

Highest educational qualification: Seven O-Levels

Biggest achievement in business: I was the first to charter Concorde to the Caribbean

Biggest regret: I find it very hard to regret

Best advice received: Always look for the simplest answer to problems

Unfulfilled ambition: I would have loved to have been a top cricketer

tonymcdonough@dailypost.co.uk