A Bishopton-born travel adviser has set up what he believes is Scotland’s first not-for-profit high-street travel agency – selling ordinary package holidays at normal prices, but putting the profits into community projects.
Ryan Yule launched Yule Travel Group in March this year as a Community Interest Company. After running costs, every penny of retained profit goes to good causes, and an asset lock means that money can’t be paid out to the owners.
Ryan has spent nearly ten years as a specialist travel adviser, and says the idea came from seeing at first hand how tourism treats the places people visit. “I grew up in Bishopton but have visited, and lived or worked, in places like Australia, Spain, Vietnam, Malaysia, Laos and Cambodia,” he said. “Everywhere I’ve travelled, I’ve seen the tourism trade working well for its shareholders and not nearly as well for everyone else, both the people selling the holidays and the destination communities.
“I don’t believe a holiday should cost a family a penny more for their money to be put towards something ethical and sustainable. Yule Travel Group is my attempt to fix that.”
The firm says its claim to be a first for Scotland is based on its own checks of Companies House, the Scottish Charity Register, Co-operatives UK and the Community Interest Companies register.
So far in 2026 it has backed four projects overseas through the microfinance charity Lendwithcare. In one case, an Erskine couple’s holiday to Hanoi helped fund Sen, a Vietnamese woman looking for investment in her family’s sustainable acacia plantation. Other projects have been in Ecuador, Paraguay and the Philippines.
Closer to home, the company is now in its second season as sponsor of Paisley women’s side Gleniffer Thistle Ladies FC. Head coach Neil Stafford said: “It cost us nearly £13,000 to put a team on the park last season so every penny counts. To have Yule Travel on board for a second consecutive season is a massive boost for us and we can’t thank Ryan and the team enough.”
Ryan now plans to grow the model with a scheme that would let people who face barriers to regular work – including single parents, carers and disabled people – run their own independent travel businesses. “We’re removing barriers here and abroad, because ownership is what turns a job into an economy, whether in Paisley or Pak Beng,” he said.
Social enterprise charity UnLtd is set to back the business with grant funding, advice and support over the next 12 months. The company says holiday bookings are financially protected through Protected Trust Services, and more information is on its website at yuletravel.co.uk.