The McNeill & Thriftway Travel Group is one of the largest independent travel operators based in Northern Ireland and as a subsidiary of Ireland's World Travel Centre, a private company, it is one of the biggest travel businesses in the whole of Ireland.

McNeill & Thriftway has been formed through the merger of three companies - Thriftway, McNeill Rigby Travel and Selective Travel. Thriftway was the family business of Mukesh Sharma, the enlarged group's managing director.

Thriftway was started in 1982 and is Ireland's largest long-haul specialist 'ticket consolidation' business - acting as a wholesaler to re-sell discounted tickets to travel agents. In 2009, Thriftway merged with McNeill Rigby Travel, a provider of corporate travel services with many large corporate clients. Last year, the group acquired Selective Travel, a provider of travel services in both the corporate and retail markets.

Selective is a significant operator in the niche business of providing travel arrangements for universities. It is the sole corporate travel services provider to Queen's University and recently won a contract worth about 35m for the provision of travel services to the Southern Universities' Purchasing Consortium in England. Winning further travel arrangement contracts with English universities is a priority for the Selective division.

While all three businesses are strong and growing impressively, Mukesh Sharma admits that they fail to optimise their marketing opportunities because of the various names used.

"I am currently involved in rebranding the Northern Ireland operation - it is just too messy, with too many names," says Mukesh. The aim is to launch a clearer branding with a single name and a new logo in September. This is likely to also involve some refinement of the product range.

"Our next step now is to amalgamate all these into one premises," continues Mukesh. "We now have almost 40 employees and we are moving into Murray's Exchange [behind Belfast's Europa Hotel]."

Existing services are not restricted to air and other travel tickets, but also include worldwide accommodation and car hire booking. These are arranged through the use of the latest and most sophisticated online booking systems and internal IT systems, including an online booking facility tailored to the needs of individual corporate clients.''

Investment in IT and staff training is central to the business's approach, says Mukesh. "We invest heavily in IT - we always have done so," he says. "We have four in-house IT developers. This is one of the reasons we are so successful with corporate clients."

A valued service to corporates is the Management Information System, MIS, which provides detailed data on business travel expenditure, enabling clients to improve cost control.

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Three into one equals a sunny outlook for travel company