Up to 100 new jobs are to be created on Tyneside with the expansion of a holiday firm's booking centre.

Tour operator group MyTravel employs 300 people at its centre at North Shields, close to the Royal Quays shopping centre.

Now around 100 new jobs are to be created in the sales team in the next three months.

The expansion is due to the number of people using alternative ways of booking their holidays rather than going to a travel agent.

Permanent jobs

Paul Iredale, recruitment and training manager for Holiday Line, the arm of MyTravel which runs its telephone operations, said more staff were needed to deal with increased demand.

He said: "People like dealing with people from the North East and we are taking advantage of that."

Eighty of the jobs will be full time and another 20 will be part time.

A company spokesman said that the jobs were permanent posts, with the members of staff taking up their positions after nine weeks of training.

She said the staff were needed to deal with calls generated by advertisements on the internet and on text services.

The MyTravel group includes Bridge, Cresta, Direct Holidays, Late Escapes, Manos, Panorama, and Aspro.

MyTravel was known as Airtours until last year.