A company that has driven up sales of coach holidays is celebrating 25 years in business by flying its staff to Ireland.

Albatross is a £22m a year business with four UK offices, another in Australia and 90 people on the payroll.

Small coach operators don't usually have the resources to put together their own holidays. So Albatross has carved out a niche by doing it for them. But the operators brand the holidays under their own names and, as Mr Taggart says, you will never see Albatross on any publicity.

Albatross Travel Group, based in Larkfield, was founded in 1985. Sean Taggart, group managing director and largest shareholder, has been involved for 15 years and bought the company in 2008.

He loves the business: "It's fantastic, I'm a really lucky boy. This is the biggest train set anyone could have given me to play with."

He says that business has been surprisingly good despite the downturn.

The coach market is reasonably resilient, he says, although he has seen a disproportionate rise in domestic holidays at the expense of overseas breaks, probably due to the weakness of sterling against the euro.

Forward sales are already 13 per cent up, he says, and holidays sold by the firm's Australian office have held up well.

The firm has recently expanded into internet selling, setting up its Door2Tour.com website to consolidate holidays in the industry.

He plans to celebrate the firm's silver anniversary by flying all the staff to Ireland for a long weekend.

This is one of the ways that the firm keeps staff happy - a reason, perhaps, for Albatross being named Sunday Times Best Small Company to Work for in 2008 and 2009.