Tv rentals emigration travel and recognising new opportunities

THE lack of job opportunities in Ireland has fuelled the growth in business for travel agents who are daily booking flights for highly educated and qualified young people to Australia and Canada, writes Tom Gillespie.

Castlebar travel agent Fergus Kilkelly has had a chequered career, inheriting the business from his late father, Bob, having served as president of the Irish Travel Agents Association as well as being president of Castlebar Chamber of Commerce.

His grandfather, Robert, arrived in Castlebar from Kinvara and set up a haberdashery and grocery business in 1864. His grandfather’s brother, Fergus, also opened shops in Ballinrobe and Westport.

Fergus takes up the story: “In those days the shops were all the same. The fronts were the same. The one in Westport, now Westport Travel, is still the same. The tiles when you went in the door were the same.

“Robert Kilkelly started up a chemist shop, the first in Castlebar, before the pharmacy laws were introduced to control them. Truthfully, I don’t know where they got the money. My brother John and I still wonder where they got it.

“The most amazing thing about my grandfather, my father said, was to focus on something when it is new. My grandfather went to England with Josie Bourke looking at bicycles and Josie Bourke started importing them. But my grandfather thought they were dangerous as people would fall off them. My father thereafter always went for something new himself.

'We worked on the rural electrification where he had 30 people employed. I remember he had a shop in Hollymount. We were wiring the houses. I remember years later selling radios with the late Monty Armstrong and people down in Keelogues just getting the lights. That would be the late ‘40s/early ‘50s. That was my father’s thing and later he progressed  to the television business and my brother John did television engineering in England and my brother Rob was sent to become an electrical engineer.

“My father was very foremost in looking ahead of what was coming down the line.

“The travel agency was started by my grandfather in 1904 when the main business was steamship passage to America. Over the following 11 years, of which we have records, hundreds of passengers sailed through Kilkelly Travel to the US.

“It is amazing in the past two years  - business has been brisk because of emigration, similar to what we had in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘70s.” Today, he said, it is Australia and Canada rather that the US or England where emigrants are seeking employment and those emigrating now are highly qualified and educated.

Fergus added: “According to our books, entire families were emigrating in the early 1900s. They were hard times. The average time a person would spend in employment was 12 months to get the fare to America. “They had to be claimed  before they could travel. They just could not go and buy a ticket. The sister or aunt went and an entire family would follow.

“I went into business with John renting televisions. We had over 100 sets rented in McHale Road alone in a matter of a couple of weeks. They were the first people to get televisions from us in the town. They cost under 10 shillings a week to rent. We covered the whole western area as far as Clonbur and Headford and down to Achill, where there was a bad signal in those days. That was great business.

“After that I joined my brother Rob’s electrical contracting firm. He had quite a considerable business at the time. Everything was progressing. We worked all over the country and Rob had about 20 people working for him. I served my time with him for about five years and came back in to John again.

“When my father passed away tragically (he was killed crossing the road in November 1983 going to a travel agents conference in Limerick) I inherited the business and John got another part of the business. The amazing thing about it all is, unconsciously to us probably, we find that my niece, Jane Kilkelly, Bob’s daughter, is the senior travel executive with the IRFU and Sinead, John’s daughter, is the vice-president of human resources with Etihad and my daughter, Emma, is now running the travel agency, the fourth generation to do so.

“The whole travel business has changed. Ryanair are providing 95 per cent of our leisure market. It is wonderful that they are there. Without them we would not be in business today. In the 1970s there were 15 travel agents in Co. Mayo. Now there are just five. That is down to technology and booking online.

“I was involved with a launderette in Tucker Street for a number of years and I was lucky in the sense that I sold it in the peak.

“In 1985 I stood as an independent candidate for Castlebar Town Council with Paddy McGuinness. That was an experience because when out canvassing with Paddy we got a ‘yes’ from all the houses we called on but an ex-councillor at the time told us don’t believe that as they were all telling lies. We realised at the count that that was the case. It was quite an experience and Paddy did get elected and I hope I helped him.

“In Main Street in the 1950s there was 195 residents living on the street and employed on the street were 160 full-time people in 49 retail outlets, not counting the owners of the businesses, not like now where 75 per cent would be part-time. Everybody lived overhead their business. My mother came in from Ballinavilla and we had chickens down the back garden.”

Fergus was president for two years of the Irish Travel Agents Association, of which his father was a founding member. He continued: “We were going through the change of Ryanair at that time and there was the fear every travel agent in the country would close. We did not get Ryanair on our side until now and it is great that they have.”

He was president of Castlebar Chamber of Commerce at a period when Travenol (now Baxter) were threatening to pull out of Castlebar and thankfully with the help of the local management and the unions they reversed their decision.

Speaking on emigration, he said: “Etihad carried 70,000 passengers to Australia last year and what is happening now is that their parents are going out for weddings and to visit their grandchildren. Rather than the children coming back, the parents are going out to visit them - very much what it was like in the 1950s and ‘60s when they were going to America.”

Ireland West Airport Knock, he said, has been a tremendous success. He added: “The airport is excellent as it takes only only five minutes to get from your car in the car park to the terminal. There is no stress whatsoever. To think you have to go out of Dublin Airport today is frightening.

“The management at Knock are working very well with us all. We all have a very good relationship with them and the agents are supporting that but at the end of the day it is the consumer who decides and thankfully the consumer is choosing Knock.

“A high percentage of consumers today would not have gone on holiday but for Knock airport.”