Timeline

Entrants have until July 25 to come up with an idea, formulate a business plan and complete the online form at www.ttgbigidea.com

The Investors will shortlist the entrants into those finalists they wish to see pitch their ideas in the TTG boardroom overlooking the River Thames.

Finalists will come to London at the end of August to pitch their ideas to the Investors and to negotiate the level of equity in their company they are prepared to sell in return for the £100,000.

All finalists will be invited to the Grosvenor House in London on September 10 for the TTG Travel Awards, where the winner of the TTG Big Idea will be announced.

TTG will feature the winner in the September 19 issue of TTG and will follow their fortunes thereafter.

  

Meet the four investors looking for a Big Idea to invest in.

We've secured four of the travel industry's most successful entrepreneurs, who are looking to invest in a Big Idea they believe will succeed in the travel industry. Each of the four businessmen below are putting up £25,000 of their own money, so to be in with a chance of winning you need to convince them you've got what it takes to make it big.

Steve Endacott

Steve Endacott has enjoyed a high profile career at directorship level in some of the UK’s largest tour operating groups. From finance controller of International Leisure Group to deputy chief operating officer of My Travel, Endacott’s career has seen him take responsibility for finance, yield management, marketing, contracting, overseas operation and sales. He also held the role of group managing director of tour operations and distribution responsible for Airtours, Panorama Direct Holidays and Going Places at My Travel.

Over the past few years Endacott has been involved in the start up and development of a number of successful travel businesses including Holiday Taxis, Holiday Brokers bed bank, Click With Technology and several medium sized call centres.

Steve is Chief Executive of On Holiday Group, a 2004 start-up business aimed at exploiting developing technology and the changing demands of customers in travel. Now a multi brand travel organization occupying market leader in a number of sectors, his vision is to combine his experience and expertise to enable further development of OHG and its brands.

Steve is a passionate sport fan and follows Manchester united and the English Rugby team anywhere people are willing to invite him!!


Terry Fisher

In 1982, aged just 19, Terry Fisher started his own travel agency, Travelworld. By the time the company was sold to Airtours in 1998, Travelworld was the largest independent retailer in the UK with more than 130 branches. In 1999, Fisher became managing director of Going Places and in 2000 managing director of UKLG Retail, which had more than 800 branches and a turnover of £1 billion. In 2001, he decided to move to Spain where he set up Sileno Investments which is still going and quoted on the Spanish stock market. After five years in Spain, Fisher was tempted back to the UK to become managing director of long-haul operator Gold Medal Travel.

Fisher holds the record of being the youngest chairman in the football league, in the top spot at Huddersfield Town when they achieved promotion to division one. He is married with three children and lives in Leeds.


Simon Powell

From humble beginnings above a shop in Cwmbran, Simon Powell has grown Comtec Europe into a market-leading technology company with a turnover of close to £12 million and 120 employees. The company he co-founded is now the leading supplier of technology solutions to the travel industry supplying, among others, TUI Travel and Thomas Cook with retail, tour operating and e-commerce systems. Along the way, awards and milestones have been gained in equal measure. Powell has been a finalist in Ernst & Young’s entrepreneur of the year competition and Comtec has been awarded the Queen’s award for enterprise several times. The company is also a regular in the Times Tech Track 100, in the fastest-growing companies section.
Expansion outside of the UK is Powell’s current plan with contracts in France and North America already negotiated.

He is a high profile figure within the industry, a regular on the speaker and panel discussion circuit.


David Speakman

Born in Milnethorpe,  Westmorland, and adopted by a Lancashire miner’s family, grammar school-educated David became a quantity surveyor, first within a private practice and later becoming a director of a small building company. Unable to buy equity in the company, he and his wife Maureen bought an off-licence and grocers on his 30th birthday. Two years later with the business booming, he set up a travel agency which he expanded to five agencies by 1987. In 1989, he built, opened and successfully sold an American-themed restaurant. Two years later he tried to repeat the success but had to close during the recession of the early 1990s. In 1994, he set up Travel Counsellors, a home-based travel agency network  which today boast 905 franchisees in eight countries, and sales of over £250 million. It has the highest Net Promoter Score in the world. Travel Counsellors is the only travel agency in the UK to have won a Queen’s Award and has been a winner of the Observer Guardian Travel Awards for the last two years.

David  has been a member of Abta Travel Agents Council, has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement  Award  for the travel industry and was recently inducted into the Travel Industry Hall of Fame.