About Webs 4 Travel:

A new web design and e-marketing company, working exclusively with the travel industry.

About Nicola Grimshaw - Owner Webs 4 Travel:

My aim is to design your travel business website to be easy to use, and appealing, to potential customers whilst being search engine friendly. Using my extensive knowledge of the travel industry I can advise you on how to get the best possible return on investment from your online marketing activities.

Imagine a return on investment of over 2,000% … How does that compare to your existing marketing activity? Whilst I can’t promise that kind of return* it’s an indication of the results I’ve achieved with my own pay per click marketing campaigns. I don’t know how that compares with other companies, as most tend to be quite secretive, but I’m sure it’s a figure most travel companies would be pleased with.

Although I haven't any formal qualifications in website design, pay per click or search engine optimisation (as yet!) I feel my experience over the last 5 years as owner, manager, travel agent, website designer, ppc & seo specialist etc. at Luxury Worldwide Holidays more than makes up for my lack of qualifications.

When I launched my own travel agency in September 2004 I’d only designed one very basic website (or should I say homepage, which was never even published) as part of my HND in Tourism Management. Without the necessary skills myself, I commissioned a company who had some previous experience in travel web design to create an ‘all singing all dancing’ (bookable) website. The site took far longer than estimated to complete and after a couple of months of taking overflow teletext calls I decided my online travel agency needed a temporary website. If you follow the link to web.archive.org you can see just how basic it was! Nevertheless, using Google Adwords (pay per click) I managed to generate a reasonable quantity of enquiries.

By the way, if you were wondering, the initial website I commissioned another company to design was spectacularly unsuccessful and never even paid for itself! Although it, eventually, did exactly what it was supposed to – search and book with major tour operators, the conversion rates were appalling because the ‘big four’ (as they were, then) discounted so heavily ‘my’ prices were uncompetitive. I could have had an additional component built to discount the prices to become competitive, however (as all independent travel agents will understand) there was little, if any, profit to be made.

Nicola Grimshaw - A bit more career history:

I've been in the travel industry since I was 19 - I'm now 34...  The majority of that time has been spent as a telesales travel agent, based in a call centre or at home.  I started my travel career in holiday cottage telesales and have also worked for a low cost airline.  In 2004 I set up my own internet based travel agency and turned into a techie geek.  Oh, I also worked at the local enterprise agency, working alongside business advisors, helping and supporting people setting up their own businesses.

Nicola Grimshaw - Personal info:

I live in the countryside in Briercliffe, Lancashire, with my long suffering boyfriend (of 13 years), Chris, and our beautiful daughter, Lucy Heather, who was born in June 2009 and is the main reason for my change in career.  We have one dogs, 2 rabbits, 2 guinea pigs and 11 chickens!

* Your average profit margin and enquiry to booking conversion rates are, of course, important factors