Featured Press Article
Taxi? Airport transfers took me to the big time - The Sunday Times - 18 Oct 2005
HOW I MADE IT
Paul Stanyer
founder of Holiday Taxis
WHEN Paul Stanyer passed 10 O-levels, he became so confident ahead of his A-levels that he decided to take five of them. He ended up passing just one.
"I thought I could breeze through them but I overextended myself," he said.
He was left in a tricky position. One of five children, Stanyer lived in the town of Consett, County Durham, where, thanks to the closure of its steelworks, there was 40% unemployment.
His father, who worked for BT, decided Stanyer should take an accountancy foundation course at the polytechnic. But before the course started Stanyer went to stay with his sister in Spain who was working there as a holiday rep.
He said: "I saw how much fun she was having and I thought, hold on a minute. I could spend four years in a classroom or I could get into this lifestyle." So Stanyer abandoned the polytechnic place and the following summer got a job at a caravan park in Spain.
He hated it. "I was so lonely," he said. "It was three weeks before I saw another English person."
Luckily, his sister came to the rescue and told him that a holiday company in Greece was looking for reps. Within a few weeks Stanyer was in Corfu.
This time he loved it. "I was in a resort where every night was Saturday night. They gave me a brand new apartment to live in and a motorbike - and they were paying me. It was fabulous."
Stanyer spent the next two summers working in Corfu. Then he returned to Britain and got a job as an area sales manager for the same company. By the time he was 24 he had been promoted to national sales manager. When the company merged with another firm, however, he was made redundant.
Stanyer headed back to Greece to be a manager for another holiday company and ended up staying eight years, working his way up the ranks.
At the age of 34, however, he was made redundant for a second time. He came back to Britain, but struggled to get a job. "It was incredible how much my lifestyle overseas was devalued. I had been the regional manager for large holiday companies with multi- million-pound budgets - and I got back and people thought I was a rep," he said.
Stanyer decided it might be better to start a business of his own, and came up with the idea of providing transport at holiday resorts from the airports to hotels. Tour operators had started charging people to use their transfer buses, and Stanyer decided he could offer a better service with taxis. He also realised that a growing number of holidaymakers were travelling independently and would need transport.
The first investor he approached laughed at his idea but eventually, a friend put him in touch with some Indonesian investors who agreed to invest £100,000 in return for a 50% stake. Then he found a technology company to build the website and gave it a stake instead of payment, leaving him with just 20%.
"I didn't have any money myself, so it was a case of having 100% of nothing or 20% of something that was now a project," he said.
He launched the website in March 2003 and by May 1,000 travel agents had registered. But in June Stanyer hit a problem. "I had totally underestimated the demand for vehicle sizes other than taxis. Our website would only allow people to book a taxi so we had to take the bookings for other vehicles over the telephone," he said.
"We were in danger of becoming a call centre - which defeated the objective of being a technology-based solution."
After a lot of agonising, Stanyer decided that rather than bolt on new technology to his existing website, it would be more sensible to rebuild it entirely. As a result he was not able to promote the company until his website was fully functional.
He has since made up for lost time. This year Holiday Taxis is on target for sales of £5m and currently operates in 30 countries.
Now 39, he said: "What motivates me is that I want to be master of my own destiny. And I don't want to rely on working for someone else to make me rich or happy. I want to have control of my life."
