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The UK based gay travel company Mantrav International Group is opening a New York City office as business increases in the UK – despite the credit crunch.
The company, which was set up in California in 1990, but has been based in the UK since 2001, reports that business is up 22.5 per cent on last year and that it is expanding to become a global business by launching its services in America.
“Things are really going from strength to strength,” says company Director Malcolm Hardy, “Business has skyrocketed in the past year and continue to surprise us each month as more people are turning back to the gay travel agent and away from the internet.
"In the year ending Dec 2008, we served 384 more couples than we had the year before." Hardy says that the success of Mantrav is due to the promotional and community work his team does. “We get ourselves out there, supporting Pride events such as Manchester, London and Brighton and advertising in the gay press,” he says. “We’re out there in the community.”
The group’s Club Mancha resort in Gran Canaria has been running at 92% capacity all through the current year despite the economy turn down. Mykonos appears to have been this year’s top destination in short haul and Thailand as long haul.
The new office, based just off Times Square in New York, will be part of a partnership initiative with American-based First Service Group.
“We’re opening an office right off Times Square on 42nd Street at the end of August. We’ve put together a dedicated, professional staff with decades of experience in gay travel. They come from one of the best-known gay operators in the US which has been operating since 1984. The office and the staff are both operated by the Mantrav International Group but we will be working in partnership with First Service Group to supply travel arrangements for artists, groups and presenters through big companies such as Fox, NBC Television and various other artists’ agencies."
Mantrav International celebrated its 19th birthday in July at the Shadow Lounge nightclub in London’s Soho, the venue was packed with many of Mantrav’s past clients, and Disco diva Angie Brown whipped up a storm when she sang her heart out on stage and DJ Tuomo Fox kept the sun shining with a medley of summer anthems past and present for a cool crowd of shade wearing socialites.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
