An online travel company is increasing the size of its Sussex call centre by 50 per cent to cope with growing demand for "pickand- choose" holidays.

Lowcostravelgroup.com is employing another 50 agents at its headquarters in London Road, East Grinstead, taking the total number of people based at the site to 150.

As the number of people visiting the company's website grows, so do the number of people picking up the phone to make enquiries before booking a holiday.

Chief executive Paul Evans said: "Booking a holiday is not like booking a flight. It's not a commodity. We may still want to talk to someone.

"People want to know if there's a kiddy club, where the nearest restaurants are, what the food's like. I would love it if all our customers completed their booking online but that's not realistic and the telephone is a great opportunity to form a relationship.

"It's a chance to provide great customer service and breed some loyalty. I am looking to build repeat business - that way we can reduce our marketing costs."

The low-cost travel group has four main divisions; lowcostbeds.

com, which lets customers choose their own flights and accommodation, lowcostholidays.

com, where customers buy pre-packaged holidays, lowcostbedsagents.com, a business to business site used by travel agents, and lowcostcruising.

com, which sells cruising holidays.

The cruising side of the business is developing at pace.

This week the company launched a website which allows customers to build their own holidays, choosing which cruise company they want to travel with, which airport they want to use and which hotels they want to bookend their trip with.

Mr Evans said: "This is a unique concept. If you try to book a cruise holiday in the traditional way you get very limited choice. Everyone has to travel from the same airport and you probably end up in the same hotels at either end of your journey.

"We are changing all of that, and offering better prices.

"The travel industry is no longer about trying to sell what's available but making what people want available.

You have to be flexible. Those that tend to be static are those that are struggling."

Mr Evans launched the Low Cost group three years ago.

His first job was as a Club 18- 30 resort manager in Portugal.

He later worked for Saga Holidays before moving to Manchester to join Airtours where he spent ten years, rising to the position of purchasing director.

From there he was appointed deputy managing director of Going Places Travel and next spent a year as managing director of Crawley-based First Choice Holidays.

He then oversaw the development of Holiday Hotels - an accommodation-only provider - which was sold to Lastminute.

com a year later.

He joined airline catering group Watermark as group chief operating officer before going into business himself in 2004.