Speakers

John Hays

CEO, Hays Travel

In 1980, with no industry experience and only a desk at the back of his mum’s children’s wear shop in Seaham, Co Durham, John Hays struggled to get his travel business off the ground.

Twenty six years on, he has been recognised as the North-East Entrepreneur of the Year, and is the proud father to Hays Travel – ABTA’s largest independently owned travel agency and one of the Sunday Times’ 100 Best Companies to Work For in the UK for 2006. Hays Travel now employs over 700 staff and pulls in an annual turnover of £300 million.

Born in Sunderland and educated at a local grammar school John left the North East to study Maths at Pembroke College, Oxford, and to complete a Masters Degree in Business Administration at Manchester Business School. After spending a short spell in the City, John returned to his North East roots to set up the first branch of Hays Travel.

Today the company has 33 retail branches across the North East, call centres in Sunderland, Newcastle and Stockton, as well as a homeworking operation that employs 300 travel consultants across the country. Hays also runs the Independence Group, the biggest ABTA consortium of its kind, which was set up in 1995 and now has a membership of over 130 travel agents operating under license to Hays Travel.

In the summer of 2006 John was part of a consortium which bought Sunderland Football Club and is Vice Chairman to the club's Chairman Niall Quinn. John is in the interesting position of having the club’s ever calm and restrained manager Roy Keane, reporting to him!