After 73 years in the business, the oldest travel agency in Dublin is about to take flight. The Irish Travel Agency and its building on D'Olier Street, is to be sold at auction on November 3rd. Something of a labour of love, the agency was founded by Thomas Francis Chisholm, a man who, his daughter, Celine Chisholm, says "just loved to travel". "Back then he was mainly doing the pilgrimages," says Ms Chisholm, who came back from New York to run her ill father's business in 1962, when she was 28. "He brought the Carmelites, the Capuchins and the Oblates, to Rome, Lourdes and Lisieux in France," she says. These trips were hard work then.

"Daddy brought them overland, by train, from Dun Laoghaire," recalls Ms Chisholm. "From there to Holyhead, to London, to Dover, to Calais, to Lourdes or Rome. Then they'd come back from Genoa on the P&O Ferry. It took some organising," she laughs. His agency also looked after most national sporting trips. "He always had a tremendous admiration for those who gave their time freely to the FAI and boxing clubs, which kept young men occupied. He organised all the FAI's trips and took most of the Olympic teams out. He was in Munich, and I'd say one of his highlights was when he was in Sydney for Ronnie Delaney winning the medal in 1956."

Ms Chisholm took on the business at the time when less pious Dubs were beginning to think about getting all continental for some plain old holidays.

"People had more money and of course air-travel transformed things," says Ms Chisholm.

The advent of the tour operators and their package holidays - or "inclusive tours" as they were known - did not adversely affect business. The Irish Travel Agency was immediately allowed to buy packages from the operators to sell on for a commission. There have been problems, however. Notable among these have been the several break-ins at the D'Olier Street premises in the early 1990s. More insidious perhaps has been the fact that competition has grown ever more cut-throat and a cut of the profits ever more keenly fought over. While the commission on ticket sales remains at 9 per cent and the work involved in selling them the same, prices have come down.

When Ryanair reduced its commission to agents to 7.5 per cent, a further dip in profits was noted.

However, more people are taking holidays than ever before. "They're taking two and three foreign holidays a year now," Ms Chisholm says. "I think people are being very clever because they are going for a week, instead of two weeks, at a time, which means they don't take any more time off but can enjoy each minute more. They don't get bored. They don't have to worry about money lasting for a week and they can go to two different places."

D'Olier Street may not be as busy a thoroughfare as the neighbouring Westmoreland Street, but things look set to liven up over the next year. The £42 million Westin Hotel will be opening on nearby Fleet Street in the next few months and negotiations are underway with Manchester United to open a restaurant and shop in the adjacent ICS Building at the head of O'Connell Street.

Celine Chisholm plans to continue organising the annual pilgrimage to Lisieux, but apart from that she plans to retire and "do a bit of travelling."

The Irish Travel Agency is for sale through Gunne Commercial with a guide price of £800,000.