Tripping the light fantastic: Aurora provides stunning backdrop to mark 30 years of Marion Owen Travel
SPECTACLE: The Northern Lights in Karesuvanto, Finland. Pictures by Phil Ascough
Chewing the Fat - Out to lunch with Phil Ascough
Enjoying a Northern Lights tour with one of Hull’s top travel agents, Marion Owen
It was literally a top of the world experience and the sort of spectacle that makes Marion Owen so pleased she pursued a career as a travel agent rather than in hairdressing.
The aurora were dancing above the forest pines, expanding across the horizon and hovering high above the snow-covered hillside trail where we stood, stretching our necks and switching our smartphones into night mode to capture the head-spinning display.
There had been a few appearances earlier in the week but nothing on this scale. On the final night, this was the headline act of a northern lights tour which made the most of the Arctic conditions in of one of the most northerly villages in Finland to take people for trips by snowmobile, dogs and reindeer across a frozen river border and atop one of the thousands of icebound lakes.
It was another resounding success for Marion, who in May will celebrate the 30th anniversary of her travel agency which is still in its original office in Portland Street, Hull, now squeezed in between its more modern neighbours St Stephen’s and the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel.
Talking about the reasons behind Marion’s career choice proved rather difficult for her, and even brought a few tears.
She said: “My mum and dad worked really hard. He had a supermarket on Askew Avenue and they just couldn’t leave the business. My dad felt really awful that I didn’t know what a holiday was and everybody at school was taking about where they had been.”
GLOBETROTTER: Marion outside the Davvi Arctic Lodge Hotel at Karesuvanto, Finland
Marion recalls her grandfather minding the shop for her earliest family holidays in Cayton Bay and then Newquay, when her dad nearly had to go home to sort out a problem at the shop.
To prevent a repeat scenario the following year they decided to fly to Jersey from Brough. The construction of the huge Capper Pass chimney put paid to that idea and they flew from Leconfield via Heathrow instead. Coming back they somehow caught the wrong connection from Heathrow and ended up at Teesside.
Captivated by the excitement and the confusion, by the age of nine Marion had set her heart on a career as a travel agent.
At 18, she gained experience with the Hull offices of various national concerns including Thomas Cook and the AA, before setting up on her own after the latter pulled out of holidays to concentrate on motoring matters. Marion Owen Travel secured its ABTA licence in June 1993 and drew on its excellent network of contacts and an unrelenting commitment to customer service to offer holidays with a difference.
Marion said: “We are a bit off the beaten track and we tend to get customers who are genuinely interested rather than just browsing. If people want an easy holiday they tend not to come to us but if they want something different they know we can help them.
“We would quite like to do some of the easy work but I don’t think it would be as much fun!”
LOCAL HELP: Marion with reindeer pulling sleighs across a frozen river
I first paid serious attention to Marion Owen Travel nearly a year ago when the company was named top travel agency in Yorkshire at the TTG Top 50 Travel Agencies 2022 Awards.
In a media release from Hull BID, I reported that a decisive factor was Marion’s commitment to go the extra mile. She told how she took the wheel of the coach herself to lead a series of excursions and coach tours when Covid hit and the rising cost of drivers started to eat into the company’s profits during 2021.
Marion said: “I have had a coach licence for ten years so I was already a back-up in case the driver became ill. It all proved worthwhile because I was able to drive some tours myself and keep costs down.”
The advent of coach trips was part of Marion’s strategy of finding new ideas to tackle changes in the industry. Her business has always been a specialist in cruises but when the terms for dealing with the big operators became less favourable she developed the group travel side.
When Covid hit, borders closed but people still wanted to travel. Marion modified the offer again.
She said: “With Covid, UK tourism was able to highlight what it has to offer and that’s how our coach holidays started. We had a lot of customers who wanted to see the interesting sights and didn’t want to drive themselves. They wanted everything sourcing for them so we provided quality coach holidays.”
Among the lingering problems from Covid are staff shortages in related, essential business sectors: “So many people after Covid didn’t want to go back to work. It’s not only in this country, it’s every country, and I can’t see it changing for some time.”
Another issue is impatience among one or two customers who haven’t grasped the need for greater flexibility when making their bookings: “With some people their patience has waned and they can’t appreciate that we have to work day to day, schedules might change a few times but we will still get everybody sorted. We stick to it until everybody has got what they need.
“Throughout Covid, as soon as the government allowed people to travel we were able to get everybody where they wanted to go, and to do that we were on call 24/7.”
The positive trend post-Covid is a population with a greater hunger to travel: “Generally our customers are people who enjoy culture and activities and want to have everything done for them so they can just turn up and relax.”
The size of the team varies from as many as ten, dropping to just Marion and colleague Emma Williams in recent years. The addition of Marion’s sister, Susan, now makes three but Emma’s daughter Macie, who has been helping out, will soon be heading off to college.
Marion said: “As we shed staff naturally we ask ourselves whether we need somebody else, and more to the point whether we can get the right person. You have to get someone who is passionate about the job.”
READY WHEN YOU ARE: Marion with dogs about to lead the sled tour across a frozen lake
Marion’s husband Kelly, a retired aircraft designer, has helped with some tours but their son Cameron has no ambitions to enter the business, instead pursuing his own career as a strength and conditioning coach.
After retiring from his supermarket, Marion’s dad Gordon escorted one trip, with 72 guests split between two hotels in Cyprus.
Marion recalled: “Someone locked themselves in the bathroom, someone else lost their false teeth and someone else ended up in hospital because they didn’t take their water tablets. I realised I’d asked my dad to do too much, and we never took a group that big again!”
That doesn’t mean every trip is trouble-free, but hiccups are usually relatively minor and easily resolved. Even the time when Kelly picked up an elderly traveller to take her to join the coach. He checked with her that he had the correct case, he passed it on to the coach driver and it arrived safely at the other end.
Only when it was reopened at the destination did everybody realise that instead of the guest’s clothes for a glamorous event in a swish hotel the case contained her late husband’s cassette collection.
Marion said: “All she had were the clothes she stood up in, but fortunately she was already beautifully turned out and we were only there for one night.”
YORKSHIRE’S FINEST: Marion Owen, right, and colleague Emma Williams with the TTG Top 50 Travel Agencies 2022 award for top travel agency in Yorkshire
On our trip, passengers were already checking in at Humberside Airport when one couple realised they had left one of their passports at home. With the co-operation of the airport security team, Marion was able to send a car to the couple’s home in East Yorkshire, retrieve the passport and get them onto the plane in time.
Flying to Enontekio airport, there’s not much of a view as you cross the North Sea, Norway and Sweden en route to Finland. When the clouds clear you can just about work out that the patches of grey are the forests, and the white in between is the ice coating the frozen lakes, rivers and roads.
Thoughts turn to your chances of surviving a crash landing in such terrain. And, as we like to write about food, what you might eat, or what might devour you? A bear? A wolf? Or, perhaps more likely, a fellow passenger feeling peckish given the inadequacy of the in-flight menu!
But we arrived safely and conducted a series of bite-sized interviews over substantial lunches and dinners built to support the outdoor schedule, a glass or two of fine, Karhu Finnish beer, and during the activity programme which is an essential part of the tour.
You can’t be sure the aurora will come out to play – a travel writer for The Times poured out 1,500 words this week about not seeing them – so you pack in all the other action to ensure everybody will have plenty of memories to take home.
With glimpses of the aurora during the first three nights, added to the exhilaration of trips on snowshoes, on snowmobile, and being pulled by dogs and reindeer across the ice and snow, it was easy to understand why Marion has already sold out her 2024 trips and is now booking for 2025. And then came the aurora extravaganza on the last night.
The worry for our hosts Transun and all the other aurora operators must be long-term sustainability. Daytime temperatures during our trip rarely dipped below about minus 3. The snowshoe expedition leader, an authority on navigating the forest’s flora and fauna, told us the norm for this time of year should be around minus 15 to minus 20. The tour is likely to be available for a few years yet, but Marion is always looking for new options.
She said: “You have to keep reinventing your offer and your business, changing to keep up with the market. You can’t sit still and think people will keep walking through the door and everything will work out, because it doesn’t always do that.”
Become a Patron of The Hull Story. For just £2.50 a month you can help support this independent journalism project dedicated to Hull. Find out more here
Marion doesn’t have a favourite tour destination but one of her most memorable trips was a 28-day special taking in air, sea, road and rail and calling at the Calgary stampede, the Rockies, Vancouver, Alaska and other points, with guests jumping on and off along the way.
The long distance bookings, and particularly the tailor-made tours, are higher revenue but the group tours, which include some cruises, generate significant volume. And every trip is a sales opportunity – on our group tour to Finland, guests were checking availability for a repeat visit, and others were asking about bespoke arrangements to go to South African and Japan.
Closer to home, Marion has found that her customers enjoy the “quirkiness” of Shetland and the Scilly Isles, and she’s looking forward to September and a nine-day trip which is the next instalment of her round-Ireland tour.
She describes her own holidays as few and far between. India is a favourite, as is Mauritius for golf with Kelly, spa treatments and “good food, good wine and good company”. They are also keen skiers.
Next on her personal list is the North West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and she’s planning it now.
After 44 years in the industry, Marion is acutely aware of the toll which constant travel can take, and she’s mindful of the need to manage the number of escorted tours.
She said: “I have always travelled a lot. Even with the AA I would go away ten times a year. Pre-Covid I was away almost as much as I was at home and when everything stopped it was quite hard because I was so used to being away!
“This year I have been trying to keep it down, but then I was going to retire when I was 50 – I don’t know what happened there!”