While most of our consultants are new to travel, Nikki invested in a travel franchise with us after spending 20 years in corporate travel – and she’s reaping the benefits.
“I am earning the same money as I did working as a corporate travel consultant for some major travel firms but working 50% of the time.
“Life in the corporate travel world was pretty full on with long days and stress. Now I can fit my work around my life, not the other way round,” adds Nikki explaining that she has a young baby and family to look after.
“The flexibility the franchise offers is fantastic, making it easy to juggle work and domestic life.
“Buying the franchise has changed my quality of life.”
Nikki loves the fact that she no longer loses 2-3 hours of her day commuting and that she’s there for the children.
“I never need to miss another sports day or nativity play again!”
Nikki researched the franchise market for travel sector franchises before choosing The Travel Franchise and launching her business under the company’s customer-facing ‘Not Just Travel’ brand.
Although The Travel Franchise has a reputation for helping people new to travel, Nikki has found our support structure incredibly useful.
“I just got the feeling that the support would be there whenever I needed it and this has absolutely been the case in reality.”
Every consultant benefits from having a personal business development manager (BDM) who will help them day-to-day or with a longer-term business plan.
“Natalie, my BDM has been absolutely fantastic. After the stress of the pandemic my confidence dipped a bit, but with her help I put a new business plan together and was quickly back on track again.”
But with her former travel background, could she have gone it alone and set up her own travel agency?
“In theory I could have, but it would have been a huge gamble with big overheads.
“With The Travel Franchise I have the backing of an established brand, covered by ABTA, and head office takes care of all the bookings, payments and admin.”
Nikki now has regular clients across the UK and still gets a thrill from helping organise dream holidays for families.
And buoyant bookings bring her good commission, too.
“My plans for this year are to increase my sales by 40-50% on the previous year. I’m off to a good start!”
Nikki recently put together a South Africa package for family totalling £40,000.
“It only took a couple of hours to research the itinerary but the client was delighted with the outcome.”
Nikki loves travelling and has been on several fact-finding trips with The Travel Franchise and has visited all the Sandals and Beaches resorts in Jamaica as well Lara Beach in Turkey.
Having a young baby meant she had to turn down several familiarisation trips last year but she’s gearing up to go on some next year explaining that there’s always plenty of invites.
Nikki paid her franchise fee from savings but she wasn’t out of pocket for long…
“The Travel Franchise has a unique Money-Back Challenge scheme whereby your franchise fee is refunded if you hit certain sales milestones within a year.
“I reached it in record time. This really was the cherry on the cake.
“I now have a fantastic profitable business and it has not cost me a penny to start up!”
