Sara's Blog 12.2.24

My thanks to Mark for filling in for me over the last few weeks, much appreciated Mark- thank you!

Last week I saw the final year end results for Travel and wow, what a set of results they were!

Our Travel business full year EBITDA was just under £7m which was over £3m ahead of our budget and over £1m ahead of the previous year. This is a fantastic result and has made a significant contribution to the Society’s overall results. Well done to each and every one of you for the part you have played- whether directly serving customers, in our support teams or our development teams. These results don’t just happen, I know they take a lot of effort and hard work, so thank you for delivering such an outstanding year!

As we’re starting the new financial year, we have a new Steering Wheel and new targets for our important non-financial measures. Look out for details in a video update on Tuesday via Colleagues Connect.

Our strategy & plan for the year ahead remains the same as we shared at our Conference in the latter part of last year- grow Co-op Holidays, deliver our opti-channel model and drive our commercial performance by getting more from what we have, developing for the longer term and delivering our Co-op difference.

We have a busy year with a lot of new initiatives to deliver but, having seen what we achieved last year, I am confident that we will succeed!

In Society news, we are supporting “National Heart Month” in February. Over the last few years, we’ve been doing good together in our local communities with a number of defibrillator installations. Saving countless lives, read more about the latest installation in Abbey Farm Food store, Swindon on Colleagues Connect this Tuesday.

And finally, as we start the new lunar year as well as our financial year, the Wood Dragon of 2024 is said to bring evolution, improvement and abundance. So here’s to that being true for us all and our Travel business!

Have a good week

Sara