What if you could win back your franchise fee – and help good causes at the same time?
That’s exactly what Hannah, our latest Money Back Challenge winner, has achieved.
We’re the only franchise that returns your franchise fee if you hit a set commission target in your first year. Hannah managed it in just 11 months – all while holding down a full-time job.
What makes her story even more inspiring is how she and her husband used our Partner in Travel scheme to support nine different charities, donating a percentage of commission from every booking.
This is Hannah’s story.
Hannah has always loved to travel. Years ago, she did a Youth Training Scheme with the chain of Lunn Poly travel agents – and the passion never left her.
Fast forward a few decades and life took a difficult turn.
“My dad became quite ill in 2019 with brain cancer and my family and I started fundraising. We did lots of charity golf days, marathon running and things like that, raising just under £90,000 as a family over the last six years!”
Sadly Hannah’s dad passed away but before he died he told Hannah: ‘I want you to carry on fundraising and giving back.’”
Those words stayed with Hannah. She took time to grieve then, 18 months ago while travelling in Japan with her husband after selling a business, the idea of getting back into travel began to take shape.
“My husband Jonathan and I did the research, looked at all the different options, had a call with co-founder Paul and decided to embark on a travel franchise.”
Our Partner in Travel scheme was what sealed it. It allows franchisees to officially partner with a charity, business or club and donate 10% or 25% of their commission. We handle all the admin so franchisees can focus on booking holidays.
If a customer books a holiday with Hannah, they can choose one of her partner charities to benefit. If they rebook, they stay linked to that charity. And if they have a different charity close to their heart, Hannah arranges an offline donation instead.
But for Hannah, supporting charities had to go deeper than donations.
“We didn’t want to simply donate to them, but to work with them too. That’s really important. So I work very, very closely with every single charity partner that we’re partnered with and do things like corporate speaking at their events.”
For Hannah, it’s not just about the money – it’s about awareness, partnerships and rallying more people to support good causes.
She has recently signed an official partnership with Prostate Cancer UK and hopes to team up with sports clubs to raise awareness, offering travel incentives along the way.
“Anyone can say that they donate to charity, which is great. But when you’re officially doing it and literally every single booking that we make touches a charity, I think there’s something a little bit special about that.”
Hannah has already worked with nine charities (Brain Tumour Research, Breakthrough T1D, Bedford Blues Foundation, Alder Hey Children’s Charity, Willen Hospice, Papyrus Prevention of Young Suicide Lives, In Aid of NSPCC, Al’s Pals and FACES), but she’s ambitious to grow that number adding another five or six by the end of 2025 and eventually open high-street shops that all donate to good causes.
“And we want to have a big team. We want to be able to roll this out. We want to not be discriminative. We know that charities, when you get an illness, it affects anybody. It’s non-discriminative.
“We want to see our business grow. And we would love a group of people that we can employ that have the same ethos as us, the same beliefs, because that’s really important. We’re heavily involved with these charities and we want that to remain. So I’d love to have one, two, three shops in the future.”
Of course, working with charities is not always straightforward.
“When charities have official partnerships, they’re not able to favour one business over another so it’s hard for them to do regular posts and shout-outs. But they can share or comment on something we’ve written.
“We work very, very closely with them to make sure that what we’re doing isn’t breaking any of the monopoly rules or any rules that they have to follow as a charity because very quickly they can be struck off – and that’s something that we don’t want for them.”
Has she done it alone? Far from it.
Hannah says the training and support she’s had from The Travel Franchise has been invaluable. We provide every franchisee with a dedicated Business Development Manager (BDM), and Hannah is quick to give our team of experts credit.
“The BDMs have a really, really important part to play. And I’ve been very, very fortunate with NJT that every single BDM that I’ve had and that I’ve worked with have been phenomenally supportive and really understand why I’m doing what I do.”
Hannah also praises our marketing team for slick ready-made social posts; our back office operations team who help with any problems, ticketing and amendments; plus the community spirit we foster among franchisees.
“No matter what time of day it is, there’s always another travel consultant that’s on the end of a WhatsApp or a phone call to help you.”
She also found our mentorship retreats abroad (included for free in the Elite package) a game-changer.
“To be honest I wish I’d gone on them sooner. [Co-founder] Steve’s advice really made a difference.”
Hannah’s journey so far has been hard work, but is she glad she made the leap?
“Yes. It’s so exciting. The sky’s the limit with the charities and the more that I can book in terms of holidays, the more they can benefit.”
But despite working all hours, Hannah makes sure she schedules in time for her own trips abroad with her husband, three children and two step children.
After winning our Money Back Challenge she plans to use some of our £14,995 franchise refund on a family safari.
“Spending time and traveling as a family is really important,” she says tearfully.
“I’m never going to be the richest person in the graveyard, but I am going to be the one that has the memory that I helped as many people as I can – dad would be proud.”
