A team of travel agents with over 100 years' experience in the holiday trade is beaming with sunny smiles after scooping a top award. The 7 staff from Hays Travel North West's Kirkby store won the Merseyside and North Wales Travel Shop of the Year title at the company's glittering awards evening at Chester Racecourse.

Shop Manager Natalie Mackay said it was a great reward for all the hard work they put in and testimony to her team's breadth of knowledge and experience in the industry. She said:- "Collectively we must have a total of more than 100 years of experience in the travel sector. We all absolutely love our jobs and we live and breathe travel. I think that's why we have so many repeat customers. People come back to us time and again because they know we can find them the holiday they want at any time in their lives."

The super 7 also all hail from Kirkby. Natalie said:- "It wasn't planned that way, it's just coincidence that we were all born and brought up locally but it's a great advantage us knowing the area so well and being a part of the Kirkby community. Our faces are familiar in the area, which also helps when people are looking for an agency they can trust to advise them on their dream holidays. We now know many of our customers by their 1st names and have built up a lovely rapport with them."

Natalie and her assistant manager Francine Finnin are hugely proud to have sent over 4,000 people on holiday during the year.

Also in the team are Samantha Smith, Paula Cameron, Megan Shelly, Georgia Wallace and Lucy Marrs and their reward is a three-day stay in a luxury hotel in Turkey for a Hays Travel Conference.

Natalie said they were all over the moon to have hit such a sales milestone. "It is a real achievement in itself but to win Travel Shop of the Year is the icing on the cake. We knew we had done well this year but we were all still massively surprised when we heard we'd won the big one. The girls have been brilliant. We all get on well and pull together to make sure we reach our targets. It's also great to think that we have helped so many people take off on fantastic holidays which they will remember for years to come. We've dealt with thousands of passengers; more than four thousand a year I'd say; and we have all travelled extensively ourselves so we can talk to them from personal experience. If they ask us what a place is like then one of us has usually been there either on a personal holiday or on an industry-related educational trip so we can tell them firsthand."

Natalie said demand for getaways varies broadly from domestic breaks in the UK to Caribbean cruises. She said:- "There is no one type of vacation which dominates the rest. We cover a wide range of destinations and styles of holiday, though it would be true to say we have noticed an increased demand for cruise holidays over recent years. I think one reason is that people can book them a few years in advance now. We're already taking bookings for 2025 and people can spread the cost over a longer period, paying in instalments by direct debit. It's really opened up that market to those who perhaps couldn't afford to pay all in one go before. Cruise holidays used to be very much a once in a lifetime dream for many but now they are a lot more affordable and accessible and I'm looking forward to a cruise to the Caribbean later this year."

The awards are organised annually by Hays Travel North West managing director Don Bircham to celebrate the achievements of the more than 200-strong Hays Travel team across the entire Region.

The awards are organised annually to celebrate the achievements of the Hays Travel North West team and Managing Director Don Bircham said:- "It has been a fantastic year and the awards are our way of saying thank you to our wonderful staff who have done such a great job over the years. This year we have seen record sales and people really have been keen to book their holidays and they have been beating a path to our doors for the professionalism, expertise and friendliness of our staff. Through Hays Travel we are able to offer a brilliant choice and we are not aligned to any particular tour operator so we can sell a wide range of holidays which fit the customer's requirements. We're sending more people on holiday than ever before and so we're sending our award-winners away on a break of their own as a reward."

Hays Travel North West, which is fully ABTA and ATOL-registered and employs 250 staff, at 46 shops across North Wales, the North West and Shropshire, was founded by Don Bircham when he opened his 1st store in Mold, in Flintshire, in 2000.

His network of travel agencies is the main partner of the hugely successful Hays Travel, based in Sunderland, the UK's largest independent travel agency.