25.11.11 – Big changes for us and Barratt Tours!

First of all sorry for the lack of blogs for a few months now it is fair to say we have been making some life changing decisions and free time has been shall we say slightly limited! As I hope regular readers will know, we enjoy our jobs but after 14 years of running Barratt Tours we felt it was time for a break and another challenge, this business really has taken it out of us and with the increase in competition we feel we are having to work ever harder for less return. We always have loads of ideas of what we would like to do but the sheer amount of work in running our day tours has really tied us down, we took a holiday a couple of weeks ago and whilst relaxing in the sun I realised that it was the first Saturday that we hadn't worked since early March! So what is happening? Well I have to report that we have sold the Barratt Tours day tour part of our business to our very good friends Martins Coaches of Limerick along with one of our vehicles. Martins are long established and we feel sure will pick up where we leave off and operate great tours, they have some excellent driver/guides to step into our shoes. This will take effect from 1st Jan 2012 so if you want to take a tour with us personally our last ones will be to The Cliffs on 17th December and Blarney and Cork on 18th December, we are thinking of having a few special guests along for both so book now and give us a good send off! I cannot pretend that this has been and easy decision but a number of more personal reasons clinched it, as you know Chris was really ill last year and the sad passing of her mother really made us focus on things outside work. Also the realisation that we hadn't been able to do anything in the summer other than work for 15 years made us think, you might know I love music and old vehicles but every event connected with either happens when we are flat out with work! To summarise really we were starting to feel that life was passing as by particularly since we are both over 21 now! So what are we going to do? I have some big plans to launch a new website - still travel related but not involving coaches much! Also we are keeping our new coach Celtic Angel to offer our own small group tours which we will be running together which will be nice and these going to be known as Signature Tours, we will be releasing details of these very soon so keep watching the website – it will be linked from Barratt Tours! I think I have given you enough news to digest for this week, look out next week for an up date and more information on our plans and the Barratt Tours programme for 2012. As a final thought I would like to thank everyone that has taken our tours over the last 14 years this incredible journey would never have been possible without you!