Secret routes. Insider knowledge. Historical tit-bits and tried and tested tips and trivia. A good travel tour can often present a far richer and more rewarding experience than simply rocking up at a destination and winging it yourself.
A really great tour warmly welcomes visitors by rewarding them with engaging expertise and infectious enthusiasm, leaving the traveller feeling far greater appreciation for a place, wanting to return for more and encouraging others to visit too.
ADM Executive Travel Managing Director, Andrew McGarry
ADM Executive Travel offer four great Liverpool City Region Tours – ‘The Beatles Experience’ ‘The Liverpool City Experience’ ‘The Football Experience’ and ‘The Film Experience’. We caught up with MD Andrew McGarry, to find out more about the company and to get some visitor recommendations. Like any good tour guide professional, Andrew takes us on quite a journey…
Andrew, for those who are not familiar with ADM, tell us about your business.
We’re an Executive Travel & Tour provider, which operate mainly across Liverpool City Region but also in some other areas of the North West of the UK. We’re unique because we really focus in on the customer experience.
Our objective is to ensure that our customers feel better when they get out of one of our vehicles than when they got in no matter what service they receive be that an airport transfer for their dream holiday or our fantastic new sightseeing experiences. This is a people business and our customers are at the very heart of our business and it’s important to us that our customers have a great time whenever they are with us.
How’s business going? Are things starting to pick up again, post pandemic?
Like most businesses working in the travel and tourism sector it’s been a very tough 17 months but we’re still standing and ready to push on now. We’ve been fortunate to recently work with many massive organisations that are all based here in Liverpool, such as Liverpool FC, Amazon, Very Group to name a few.
There’s a huge opportunity now for Liverpool to capture and connect with a global market that is desperate to get out and see something new and broaden their horizons. Liverpool is a great city for that and I think we need to capitalise on this.
Download ADM Executive Travel Tours’ Liverpool City Region tour brochure.
I couldn’t agree more. Now, as a tour guide professional we’re expecting a pretty good answer to this question: What’s your perfect Liverpool day?
Breakfast in Faulkner Street before taking a stroll along Hope Street and having a pint in the Philharmonic Pub. I’d then head into down into town and probably have some lunch on Bold Street before doing a bit of shopping. A few cocktails on the Albert Dock and take in some of the sights before finishing off with dinner in the Art School with the fabulous chef extraordinaire, Paul Askew.
That does sound perfect. What insider tip or recommendation do you give new visitors to the city?
Stay for more than one night and take in one of the many brilliant sightseeing tours so you get a real insight into the history and culture of this fantastic city.
What is it about Liverpool City Region that makes it a great place to start a business?
Liverpool is a brilliant hub for a tour business because our people are naturally great hosts and naturally entrepreneurial. Liverpool is my home city and where I was brought up, so there was never any question about starting up anywhere else.
It’s also a great location for us geographically, in the centre of the UK, making expansion easier and helping us to establish ourselves as the very best in the areas we provide services in. I’ve also found that organisations like yourselves have been incredibly supportive and easy to tap into.
Why did you join the VisitLiverpool team?
I’d heard about VisitLiverpool through a number of networking sessions early last year and after speaking to Chris and Suzanne in the Marketing Liverpool commercial team, I could see exactly how and why it would work for us. The benefits so far have been greatly enhanced visibility, support and the potential to reach a much wider audience than we’d have been capable of previously, through visitliverpool.com.
What’s next for ADM Executive Tours?
We’re currently working hard to constantly develop our services, grow our team and establish strong lasting relationships with key partners across the city to go alongside the ones we already have. But we’ve also got bigger expansion plans to roll out, developing more world class sightseeing experiences and day trips to expand our offer.
My biggest ambition, personally, is to grow the business into a hugely successful tour operator; one that reaches the radar of the big tour operators who then make me an offer I can’t refuse! But that’s a long way off yet.
Finally, if Liverpool was an animal, what would it be and why?
It would be a lion, I think. Liverpool has great pride but can be a bit of a wild and untamed beast. It possesses a great roar and people are often charmed and in awe of it at the same time, when they first meet.
Visit the ADM Executive Travel website: admexecutivetravel.co.uk
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