Bosses at a Douglas travel agent have revealed why changes in the industry have led to them leaving their high street shop.

Rikki Dunnage and Ed Cox, who run Island Travel, have confirmed they will shortly be closing their Duke Street store as they seek to ’future proof’ their business.

The business partners announced to their customers last week that the foreign exchange counter would close from February 26, ahead of moving the business to the office above their Front Porch bar, across the road from the travel agent in Duke Street.

Given the increased usage of prepaid currency cards and additional regulations, Mr Dunnage said that it wasn’t viable to keep that part of the business.

He told the Examiner: ’We are going into the more bespoke appointment service, to enable us to manage our time better and so we can give customers the time they need to discuss their next holiday.

’People will be able to book appointments with us and set out what they want and we can come up with some ideas to show them for their holiday and they’ve got a decent amount of time sitting with us to create what they want.’

Mr Cox added: ’On the technology side of things, on the website, we’ve gone into quite a lot of detail on personal experiences of places we’ve been, so our customers know that they can see the locations and so if they say want to go to Las Vegas, then they can say "Ed’s been there, I’ll book an appointment with him" or "Scarlet’s been to Canada so I’ll book an appointment with her".

’We do a lot of tailor-made itineraries, which can’t be done in minutes so we find that people are letting us know when and where they want to go and giving us an idea of what they want to do and then coming back later anyway.

’This way, we’ll be able to say "Come in at this time and we’ll have something ready and you can choose which bits you want".’

Both men admitted that some people were still wary about holidays abroad after the collapse of tour giant Thomas Cook, but said with the correct protections in place, such as ABTA and ATOL, people should book holidays in the confidence their money is safe.