Irish travel agents are advised to ensure that their white label sites for Blue travel insurance products are up to date by the end of the year. At the company’s 10th anniversary celebrations in the Guinness Storehouse on Friday 4th October, Ciaran Mulligan told Irish Travel Trade News of an innovative service to be introduced in the first quarter of 2014 – but swore us to secrecy!
Ciaran did, however, reveal that GadgetInsurance.com will be launched in the USA later this year, along with MultipleTrip.com in India and the first ever travel insurance comparison sites, CompareQuotes.ie and CompareQuotes.co.uk, while house and motor insurance will also be introduced, under the Blue Insurances label, in the first quarter of 2014.
“Blue Insurances is currently 32-people strong and I expect that to increase to around 40 in the near future,” said Ciaran. “One of the best decisions Rowen and I made over our past 10 years was at the end of 2004, when we brought in David Moore as our inhouse IT Director – because developing websites etc is an ongoing major investment.
“Our toughest time? That would probably be when Budget Travel closed. We had to expand our direct B2C business while maintaining and developing our business through the travel trade – which we managed to do quite successfully.”
Prize giveaways on the night included a holiday to Vegas for the best wacky sunglasses, which was won by Andrea Hunter of Aer Lingus. Other stand-out guests included Rebecca Kelly from MSC Cruises, who wore a fluffy creation featuring lights and a halo, and Jonathan Adair from Northern Ireland Travel News, who paid homage to Ciaran and Rowan by wearing their faces on his glasses.
