Picture having a dedicated Business Consultant (BC) on hand — someone you can reach out to anytime you have a question or need assistance.
Now, imagine that this service is included in your package, with no extra hourly fees.
And what if those BCs were seasoned travel professionals, experts in the industry?
That’s exactly what we offer when you join us.
In 2025, we expanded our team with four new BCs, ensuring we’re always here for you whenever you need support. As the leading franchise for those new to the travel industry, we prioritise your success with top-notch training and ongoing support.
To give you a better idea of how our BCs assist our franchisees, we spoke with Senior BC Natalie Singleton.
What’s your role and how do you help franchisees?
My name is Natalie and I’m Senior Business Consultant at Not Just Travel. I work alongside a team of Franchise Business Consultants and our role is to help and support franchisees, giving guidance and top tips. We are here as a sounding board, to help you drive sales. We are not your boss, we are a coach and we are at the end of the phone if you need us.
What sort of experience do you and the other Business Consultants have in travel?
I’ve had over 25 years in travel. I started my career in Going Places and I’ve had various roles from trainee, to regional manager and senior sales in a luxury travel company. In the BC team, franchisees are very lucky as we collectively have over 250 years travel experience.
Meet the Business Consultants
Florence Bryce Florence has over 10 years of experience in the travel industry, having worked in a variety of roles including sales and marketing, with experience in tailor-made, business, incentive, and educational travel. Florence is an expert in social media marketing and her current favorite destination is Madeira, thanks to its stunning hiking trails, beautiful beaches and exceptional cuisine.
Claire Parsons From backpacking to working in high street stores, Claire has nearly 18 years of experience in travel and has held key positions including sales and management roles at STA Travel and as a UK sales team manager for an independent travel company. Destination, product and sales training have always been key areas of focus in her previous roles and she loves sharing her knowledge and experience with consultants.
Catherine Haynes
With over two decades in the travel industry, Catherine knows a thing or two about turning a passion for travel into a thriving business. She started out at Thomas Cook in 2003, moved on to Virgin Holidays and then took the leap to run her own successful travel business in 2017. After the pandemic, she brought her experience to a high-street independent agency, where she helped rebuild the business and open a second branch. These days, she’s using everything she’s learned to support new franchisees as they launch their own travel journeys – offering real-world advice, confidence-boosting encouragement and plenty of insider tips along the way. Her approach is down-to-earth, no-nonsense, and full of the energy and enthusiasm that comes from genuinely loving what she does.
Richard Lowrey-Heywood
Richard joined our company in March 2025, bringing with him decades of experience in the travel industry. He started his career at just 16, landing his first travel job straight out of school. Over the years, he’s done it all — from repping in Rhodes to retail management at Thomas Cook and working as a contact centre agent at Jet2.com and Jet2Holidays. His most recent role was as brand manager on the senior management team at Seaside Travel. Richard admits he wasn’t actively looking for a new role until he saw our job advert, calling it “a dream come true.”
He adds: “The job is incredibly exciting; being able to help people who’ve taken the leap to start their own travel businesses really fills my heart. We work in the best industry in the world, and I’m thrilled to help consultants grow their businesses. Plus, after years in the industry, I’ve got a few favours saved up to help them out!”
Ben Rood
Ben has been part of Not Just Travel for nearly 10 years. He and his wife Toni, one of our trainers, originally joined as franchisees — so Ben truly understands what it’s like to build a business from the ground up. Although he had no previous experience in travel, Ben brought with him a strong background in franchising, having run his own franchise business before joining NJT. That hands-on experience means he’s full of practical advice and insight to help Travel Consultants grow. Today, Ben supports consultants at the top end of our career ladder, while still offering guidance to those just starting out. Outside of work, he’s a dad of three, with a passion for skiing and golf.
Danielle Dry
With over 28 years of experience in the travel industry, including senior roles at TUI, Thomas Cook, and Barrhead Travel, Dani brings deep expertise in leadership, sales and business development. Her career spans regional training, sales management and national expansion support, equipping her with a strong foundation in driving consultant performance and business growth. She specialises in practical, results-focused coaching – helping travel consultants build confidence, improve sales processes and increase profitability. With a focus on strategic planning, KPI tracking, and time management, she empowers individuals to grow sustainable, successful businesses and achieve long-term success.
Paula Barker
With 38 years in the travel industry, Paula brings a huge amount of experience and passion to her role. She spent over two decades at Thomas Cook, working her way up from assistant manager to cluster manager, leading successful teams across the south coast. After Thomas Cook’s closure in 2019, Paula joined Not Just Travel, working in Operations and later leading the Support Team — giving her a solid understanding of how the business works behind the scenes. Since 2022, she’s been part of the Franchise Business Consultants team, using her industry know-how to coach and mentor TCs. Paula’s all about helping people grow in confidence, improve their sales and build businesses they’re proud of – with real, lasting results.
Debra Leavy
Debra began her travel career in 2001 as a modern apprentice at Thomas Cook and has since built up 24 years of experience across the industry. Now based in Manchester, her background spans training, management, and coaching with a strong focus on personal and professional development. She holds an ILM Level 5 qualification in coaching and mentoring and has spent the last six years working as a dedicated travel business coach. While Debra has a lifelong passion for travel, her true motivation comes from supporting, developing, and empowering others to reach their goals – and celebrating their successes along the way.
Donna Smethurst
With over 35 years of experience in the travel industry, Donna began her journey as a YTS trainee and rose through the ranks to become a cluster manager and deputy regional manager. She’s seen every side of the industry – and brings a wealth of knowledge that only hands-on experience can offer. Donna is deeply passionate about travel and now channels that passion into supporting her team of Travel Consultants. Her mission? To help them build businesses that are profitable, confident, and consistent – and to reignite their love for the industry. Whether it’s through one-to-one coaching, weekly travel clinics, or straight-talking guidance, Donna is here to energise, empower and elevate. She believes in conversations that convert, consistent action that drives growth and confidence that shines through.
Chris Winpenny
Chris brings over 17 years of travel industry experience, having worked across retail, luxury, and corporate travel. He began his career with First Choice Holidays, progressing to store manager before going on to lead the Virgin Holidays concession in Aberdeen. He later moved into business travel, managing key accounts for major players in the oil and gas sector. Before joining Not Just Travel in May 2025, Chris spent eight years at Kuoni as a store manager, also taking on secondments in the retail marketing team and supporting a range of high-profile retail events. Now based in Aberdeen, Chris combines his broad industry experience with a passion for helping others succeed – supporting TCs to grow their businesses and make their mark in this exciting industry.
Stacey Briggs
Stacey has worked in travel for over 25 years, starting her career at DialAFlight, where she held a variety of roles. These included working as a travel consultant (a mini-franchisee selling bespoke holidays), progressing to sales manager overseeing a team, and later becoming the company’s lead sales trainer. In this role, she helped more than 120 people improve their sales, performance, and client base. Stacey feels fortunate to have travelled extensively throughout her career, but she says that coaching and supporting others in their development is “the thing that makes me buzz.” In her current role as Franchise Business Consultant for new starters, Stacey focuses on helping franchisees hit their first milestone: achieving Bronze Pin, which recognises 10 bookings and £2,000 in profit.
Clarissa Friend
Clarissa began her travel career in 2014 with Inghams Hotelplan, where she discovered her passion for working with independent travel agents. During her time there, she gained experience across a variety of areas, including ski, Lapland, and summer programmes, as well as agency sales. She later moved to The Travel Network Group, where she took on several roles, including Head of Membership – a position similar to a Franchise Business Consultant – supporting independent agents in growing their businesses. Clarissa particularly enjoys the relationship side of the industry:
“I love building friendships with consultants, working together towards shared goals and then celebrating successes as a team.”
What happens when a franchisee completes training?
When you finish training, you’re allocated a FBC and that FBC will reach out to you and book in a one-to-one so we can get to know you a little bit more. We want to know your reasons why you joined and what your goals are so that we can help you make those achievements. We set little plans, work on ideas, and we’re there from the very beginning and one of us never leaves your side.
Can you explain what the career ladder is and how franchisees work their way up it?
We have different milestones called pin levels and the first three are bronze, silver and gold. So you start off at bronze, which is where we help you to achieve 10 bookings. Then you go on to silver, which is £5,000 profit and then gold which is £10,000 in commission. And then our aim is to get you to the top of the chain, which is to reach over a million pounds in profit. And in the beginning it might seem unachievable, but you know what? It’s in your hands. It’s very much achievable.
So how exactly does a BC help initially?
So initially it’s about understanding the suppliers, getting passwords, getting you all set up on your computers, understanding how to load an enquiry, how you speak to a customer, how to search the travel agent systems and pull an enquiry together. There’s a lot of support and guidance as most franchisees are not from a travel background.
What sort of consultants do you help?
So I look after the top consultants, anything from Platinum 2, which is over £100k in commission right up to a million pounds in commission. At this level it’s all about strategy. How do you communicate with customers, working on repeats, making sure that you get those referrals. So it’s more about successful business planning strategies.
Why are so many of your consultants that have never worked in travel successful?
I think it’s a lot to do with the training and the support from the FBCs. Don’t forget, we all started our careers not coming from travel. So we all know what it’s like to get that customer phone and perhaps sometimes not know what to do. Some of us have owned our own businesses as well so we have that extra understanding of knowing what it is to wear all those different hats.
Do you enjoy what you do?
I love what I do. I love seeing people achieve, hit milestones and even go on to win awards. It gives me goosebumps every time I see somebody hit that pin movement because I know how hard and how much hard work has gone on behind the scenes. So yes, it’s very rewarding. I’ve always managed teams so it’s lovely to see somebody come in and do this with hard work and just a little bit of guidance from us.
And do you get to meet franchisees?
A lot of the time we do our calls and meetings with TCs over the phone or Zoom or WhatsApp. But you also get to meet them at conferences and some of the training retreats. All the FBCs have made some amazing relationships with consultants because we’ve seen them from the start and we’ve helped and supported them along their journey. You create a special bond and become a real close partnership as you go through every bump in the road and every high together so it’s great when you get to meet them at company overseas retreats.
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.
Jenny has spent the better part of two decades helping franchise businesses grow – not just in numbers, but in reputation, reach, and meaning. She joined The Travel Franchise in 2022 and has been central to its transformation into the most recognised and awarded travel franchise in the UK.
