Before choosing a travel franchise it’s important to look at support and training, but there’s no point in being an expert unless you have amazing holidays to sell.
When you join us, you’ll have access to more than 450 suppliers, all selling various aspects of travel.
Among those we have what we call our ‘Key Trade Partners’. These are the suppliers with whom we have an even greater working relationship.
Helping nurture these special relationships is our senior business development manager Neal Hussey.
Read our Q&A with Neal to discover how these relationships benefit our franchisees – and you if you join us.
What’s your role?
I’m responsible for the relationship between Not Just Travel and our key trade and cruise partners.
I work alongside Emma Holliday, another senior trade business development manager and we work specifically with around 40 Key Trade Partners (KTPs). Together we support our franchisees with great offers, incentives and promotions and encourage KTPs to offer incredible trips and familiarisation opportunities to our franchisees to help them build on their knowledge and expertise. I tend to focus more on our cruise trade partners and it’s with these partners that we do most of our training, giving agents the opportunity to learn, engage and experience their brands.
What’s your background?
I started off working at Carnival about 13 years ago and worked predominantly for Princess Cruises. I went on to work with Norwegian Cruise Line as a regional manager before moving back to Carnival and being a senior sales manager for P&O Cruises and Cunard. After the pandemic I went to work for MSC. I joined NJT in xxxxx and that’s built on my wealth of knowledge across different cruise brands.
So how does it work?
Well, Virgin Voyages is a prime example. They’ve been a KTP for the past couple of years from a cruise perspective. They’ve been hosts of our Seminars at Sea, supporting our Cruise Division members in growing their cruise product knowledge, growing our sales, working together on exclusive promotions and incentives. Also, they’re working with us on our first ever overseas Platinum Conference.
How does this benefit business?
The better our franchisees understand a product the easier it is for them to sell.
And when it comes to special offers, our trade partners see how engaged our franchisees are in promoting their businesses.
Because of the relationships we’ve nurtured with our cruise partners, for example, we’ve got so many passionate travel consultants that want to make cruising a particularly big part of their business.
Why do you love cruising so much?
I really think that a cruise is the best choice of holiday. I’ve done about 60 cruises to date. It’s definitely always a top choice of mine when taking a holiday. I’ve sailed on most brands from mainstream to luxury cruises. So I have a fairly big knowledge bank and understanding of what each cruise brand offers and I love it. The level of service is incredible whether that be destination wise, entertainment wise, food wise … every aspect of a cruise offers the top level.
Is cruising for everyone?
Yes! I really believe there is a cruise out there for everyone. In fact, cruising is becoming more popular now that guests are traveling with two or three generations within the same family. Each of those generations can board a cruise and have a completely different experience yet all have an equally fantastic time.
Why should travel agents love cruise too?
Franchisees can really maximise their earning potential by promoting and selling cruise holidays.
From a commission perspective, the cruise industry is very lucrative, but not just from a per booking perspective, but from a longevity perspective too. The cruise industry and each of the brands within it offer a great repeat booking rate. Cruising fans tend to cruise multiple times, multiple times a year.
The average price for a cruise holiday is around about £5,000 per booking. For a luxury cruise you’re talking tens of thousands of pounds. And then you’ve got the mass market cruises where you can get a entry level cruise for just £1,000, yet still get a great experience.
Commissions vary across the industry but on average, the commissions on cruise are very strong at over 10% per booking. Some commissions can be double that.
Since we set up our dedicated Cruise division we’ve seen a really strong growth rate in our sales not just on a total year-on-year perspective, but also on a weekly basis and repeat business has become more consistent.
Some of our franchisees are making bookings every single day on cruise holidays because of the training, the engagement, the coverage and the access that they’re getting to our key trade and key cruise partners.
What are some of the big success stories?
We’ve had loads of franchisees who have made their first cruise booking over the past 18 and that’s really something to celebrate. Cruising can be complex, so those first bookings are really important.
From your first booking it tends to just tick over from there and become more regular and consistent.
We’ve seen some incredible bookings. We’ve had some bookings of over a hundred thousand pounds. We had one franchisee that made an incredible booking of over £150 ,000 for one of our key cruise partners, Royal Caribbean, earlier on this year.
We’ve also had franchisees that have made large group bookings. One of those that had never sold a cruise before went on to make a group booking of over 1,700 passengers!
We’re so pleased with how sales have been this year. It’s a credit to the relationship we have with our trade partners and also the support that is offered from the cruise division, out business development managers and trade partners.
Will the trend continue?
In my opinion, cruising is going to continue to grow at a really positive rate. It’s going to continue to innovate. It’s going to continue to break barriers. It’s going to continue to do so many different things that are almost the first for the travel industry. That opinion is also reiterated by CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association) who is the governing body for cruising and the industry in general.
They predicted back in May this year when they released their State of the Industry Report, that cruise is going to continue in this positive direction. There’s something like 15 new cruise ships to being launched in the next three years.
So it’s a really exciting time and all of our franchisees, I would encourage them to make it a big part of their business.
How do you help franchisees grow their business?
I, along with the rest of the trade team, are here to support any ideas that franchisees have or want to pursue to grow their business. We try to create as many learning opportunities for our consultants as we can and we encourage our key partners to offer incentives, education and support to our agents. Both parties gain business this way, so it’s a win-win all round.
If you’re passionate about travel and want to launch your own travel consultancy with the support of a fun-loving, go-getting team of colleagues, then join us.
