Becky had been a travel consultant for a matter of days when the email landed. An enquiry for a trip to Tanzania and Zanzibar, worth around £13,000, from someone she had never met.
She rang her partner before she did anything else. “Have you seen the email? I’ve already got an enquiry.”
A few calls later, it was booked. Her very first booking, a big one, for a complete stranger, all while holding down a full time job. As she puts it, “I’m still very much in shock about it myself, to be honest.”
If you have ever wondered whether someone like you could actually do this, Becky’s first few weeks are worth reading.
From an admin desk to her own travel business
Becky had spent ten years in an admin role at an IT company. Alongside it, she’d always had a real love of travel. In her words, “who doesn’t love travelling?”
The nudge came on a cruise earlier this year, where she got chatting to someone who turned out to be part of Not Just Travel. That conversation stayed with her. She had looked at getting into travel before, high street agency jobs mostly, and never got anywhere. She had always assumed a franchise would be out of reach.
So she looked into it properly, talked it through with her partner, and they decided to go for it. She did her training at the start of July, with her partner sitting alongside her for the week so he could help where he can. A few weeks later, that £13,000 booking arrived.
Why she chose The Travel Franchise
Becky did her homework before committing, and a few things stood out.
The Money Back Challenge was one. She is not banking on it, but she likes that it is there. “If I do get it back, that’s fantastic, and having that there is definitely a good thing.”
The support was another. She noticed that a lot of people here were building real, full time businesses, not just dabbling, and she put that down to the help going on behind the scenes.
“There seems to be a lot of help in the background, giving us ideas, with the weekly one to ones and all that.”
And then there was the simple fact of the brand’s reputation. “It’s everywhere with the branding at the moment, isn’t it. Number one. So why would you not want to be with the best?”
The booking that started it all
Becky’s first booking didn’t come from a friend or a family member. It came from social media.
She put a post out on social media, and her sister-in-law shared it. Within a few hours, the enquiry for Tanzania and Zanzibar came through, from someone completely outside her own circle.
“I just didn’t expect it to be that quick, and I didn’t expect it to be someone I didn’t know. The sharing definitely does help. Sometimes you forget how important social media can be.”
It was a big, complex trip for a first go, and Becky handled it around her working day, calling suppliers in the gaps she could find. She shopped around, spoke to several operators, and found one who was brilliant to work with, patient with her questions and quick to come back to her. Not the cheapest option, but the right one for what her customers actually wanted.
She is honest that it stretched her. But she also sees exactly what it proved. “It means I can do things like that. If I get another one like this, I’ve already done it. I’ll be like, yeah, I’ve done that.”
“I’m not a salesy person”
If there is one worry Becky had going in, it is one a lot of people share. She does not see herself as a natural salesperson, and she never wanted to come across as pushy.
“I’m quite nervous talking to people I don’t know very well. Once you get to know me I’m fine, I can be quite bubbly, but that was a worry, telling people what I do.”
What helped was a line from her training that she keeps coming back to. You are not selling, you are telling people what you do. And the truth is, talking about travel has never been a stretch for her. “I’m generally excited to talk to people about holidays. Are you going away? Where are you going? I’d love to go there. I’ve always been like that.”
That is the whole approach here. You are not pressuring anyone. You are being yourself, letting people know you can help, and leaving the door open. As Becky sums it up, “just let me see if I can help you, and if not, no hard feelings.”
The support behind her
Becky is quick to credit the people around her for how quickly she has found her feet.
When you join The Travel Franchise, you are paired with a business consultant who becomes your guardian angel from day one. These are people with years of experience across the travel industry, there to support you with whatever you need, from the technical side of loading your first booking, to building a business plan, to growing your customer base over time.
For Becky, that person is Paula, and she has been a constant. Not just in their scheduled one to ones, but in the small, in the moment questions that come up during a normal week. Where do I go for a Eurotunnel booking, where do I start with a UK holiday. “I message her every now and then with these things, and she’s very quick at getting back to me.”
The wider support team has been the same. “Whenever I’ve spoken to support, they’ve helped me almost straight away.”
Could this be you?
Becky joined with no travel experience, a full time job and a genuine worry that she was not the salesy type. A few weeks in, she has booked a £13,000 trip for a stranger who found her through a shared social post, with a mentor on the end of the phone whenever she needs one.
None of that required her to be anyone other than herself. It just required her to give it a go.
If her story sounds a little like where you are right now, that is worth paying attention to.
