What better place to hold your inaugural conference than among the vines in the gorgeous Hunter Valley sipping Shiraz and Semillon. Yes, it’s fair to say itravel lost its conference virginity in style over the weekend.
itravel was founded by two friends in a small office in Elizabeth Street, Sydney back in 1995. At that time it operated as a tiny independent travel company that prided itself on good old fashion customer service.
itravel still carries those same values today, but now it has a network of around 140 agents through both its franchise stores and mobile agent networks.
With such an expanded network, Managing Director Steve Labroski decided it was definitely time for itravel’s first conference.
“We’ve just been able to continue to steadily grow and the growth has now gotten to a stage that we needed to somehow bring our network together,” Steve told KARRYON over the weekend.
“Our network is broken up a little by the fact that our franchisees spend more time together than our home base agents do and then we’ve also got an affiliate, so it was important we could bring them all on the one page and actually take them all on the same journey.”
itravel Managing Director Steve Labroski
With many of the itravel stores located around Newcastle and Sydney, Steve chose The Hunter Valley Crowne Plaza to host the inaugural conference.
The successful event held over the weekend saw itravel agents enjoy networking drinks, listen to inspiring talks by speakers Meg Salter and Mark Bunn and of course learn about the future of itravel from Steve himself.
The weekend also provided a great chance to network with suppliers before culminating in a fantastic gala dinner.
Steve said the first conference was a great success and the perfect way to “share the knowledge that we have as a business”.
- READ: WINTER COAT APPEAL: Hundreds share the warmth with itravel
- READ: ‘ilove’ itravel’s first ever TV ad – WATCH it now