Minoan signs “groundbreaking” deal with Britain’s postmasters.

Travel and leisure company Minoan Group has signed a deal to operate a nationwide network of mini-travel agencies in Britain’s 9,000 sub post offices.

The Glasgow-based firm, which started out as a listed vehicle for developing land on Crete but has now branched out into the retail travel business with a wave of acquisitions in Scotland, said the “groundbreaking” contract would give it access to more than 10 million customers who use post offices every week.

Minoan will install unmanned computerised travel agency kiosks across the post office network. An initial three month pilot phase will see up to 50 kiosks installed across local, largely market town based sub post offices, with a further 50 added every three months.

Minoan’s exclusive agreement with the National Federation of Sub Postmasters aims to open up a minimum of 1,000 kiosks over the next five years.

The kiosks will come under Minoan’s new Postcard Travel brand and be operated through the group’s Stewart Travel subsidiary.

Minoan chief executive Duncan Wilson said: “This gives us the opportunity to have complete national coverage in the UK.

“The operation will be offer driven and we will work very hard with our suppliers to provide the very best exclusive offers to the very many commercially driven postmasters who will point out the service to their customers and tell them about these deals.

“It is important to remember that people want their post offices. They desperately don’t want them to close and they will support them if they have the products they want.

“The potential is enormous. Post offices account for the UK’s largest retail estate and 93 per cent of the UK population live within one mile of a post office.

“This also reinforces the travel credentials of the post office, already established through their sales of foreign currency and the processing of passport renewal applications.”

Wilson believes the kiosks will have their greatest potential in rural and semi rural areas and offer great scope not just for holidays but for ancillary products like car hire and airport car parking.