Gillian Bowler, Founder of Budget Travel, Dies

Hot Press is deeply saddened to hear of the death of Gillian Bowler, the founder of Budget Travel. She died after a long illness. She was just 64 years of age.

Gillian was one of Ireland’s best known entrepreneurs. She took the travel business in Ireland into uncharted territory with Budget Travel, which she launched in 1975, specialising first in holidays in Greece and then expanding into other destinations across Europe and beyond. It was a brilliant success story that garnered lots of press attention, to the extent that she became one of the most written-about figures in Irish business.

In photographs, she was almost always pictured with her trademark sunglasses poised on top of her head. It was an iconic look, which reflected a finely tuned sense of how marketing works. The association between Budget Travel and sunshine and good times was immediate.

For a long time, through most of the 1980s, the launch parties for Budget Travel were seen as special occasions in the media calendar. Gillian was particularly good at cultivating relations with the press and with RTE, and the annual parties held in Dobbins Restaurant to mark the publication of the new Budget Travel brochure were sometimes raucous, often Bacchanalian and generally enormously enjoyable nights, attended by many of the leading lights of Irish media.

Gillian succeeded in creating a genuine sense of excitement about the holiday packages that she put together every year. And one of the highlights of the event every 12 months was the draw, through which one of the journalistic gang present won a holiday – loud were the cheers when the lucky name was pulled out of the hat.

She and her husband Harry Synder sold 90% of Budget Travel in 1987 for a reported Stg£4.5 million, in what was a very lucrative deal at the time, and went on to sell the remaining 10% in 1996 for Stg£3.2 million.

She served on numerous boards later in her career. During the 1990s, she was a member of the board of what was then the Independent Radio and Television Commission (IRTC), which later mutated into the BAI. She was appointed to the board of Irish Life in 1998 and she stayed on as a director following the merger that created Irish Life and Permanent. She resigned in 2010.

She was the chairperson of Fáilte Ireland from its foundation in 2003 and served a full five-year term there, until 2008. The current Fáilte Ireland CEO Shaun Quinn paid tribute to Gillian describing her as "a very dynamic, effective and truly inspirational chair who successfully guided our organisation during its early formative years with her unique blend of insight and enthusiasm.

"On behalf of Fáilte Ireland,” he added, "I would like to extend our condolences to her husband Harry and her extended family."

While she had to be both tough and shrewd to do well in the Travel business, Gillian was both hugely likeable and naturally friendly.

“I knew Gillian from the early days of Hot Press,” Hot Press editor Niall Stokes said today. “She was always a lovely person to deal with – naturally friendly and warm. And everyone who worked with her really seemed to love her, which is quite an achievement for someone who has the responsibility of running a business.

"But she also seemed to have a magic touch, finding really nice places for people to visit and to stay. Her USP in Budget Travel was that you could rely on everything that she put in the brochure because she was a person of genuinely good taste and discretion.

“I was really pleased, when I was appointed as chairperson of the IRTC in 1993, when I heard that Gillian had been re-appointed to be a member of the same board. She was always very considered and constructive – and good humoured – in her contributions. I could turn to her for advice any time I needed it and she was both a source of great wisdom and a brilliant ally: she proved to be very progressive and open to new ideas and thinking.

“She was always great company. She had a taste for the finer things in life, but she was also cultured and well read and intelligent. I really enjoyed working with her and when the five year term was up was sorry that we no longer had something in common to work on.

“She will be remembered by people that knew her well as a good, kind, thoughtful and generous person, who happened also to be very imaginative, smart and original in her approach to business. She will be greatly missed."