Once I have signed up and finished my training, am I on my own? It is one of the questions we hear most often from people thinking about starting a travel business, and it is a fair one. Going it alone is daunting.
We put that question to Dave Pope, our Head of Sales and Training, on a recent Travel Franchise Hour webinar. Dave has spent 37 years in the travel industry, and he now leads the team that trains and supports our franchisees. Few people are better placed to explain exactly what happens after you join, so we sat down with him to talk it through.
A career built on the exact journey our consultants take
Dave did not start out in travel. He began in banking, disliked it, and left to spend time in Australia living and working near the beach. He came back to the UK with no money, no job and nowhere to live, and answered an advert for a company selling holidays to Australia. He had never sold anything in his life. It turned out he was rather good at it.
From there he built a career that took him through sales management to director level, before what he calls his “M25 moment,” commuting into London and deciding he wanted to build something of his own. He started a travel training business, worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, and in 2019 was invited to speak at a Not Just Travel event. Shortly afterwards he was offered a job, and he joined just before the pandemic.
His own story mirrors the one so many of our consultants live. A career that was not quite right, a leap into travel with no experience, and the discovery that the skills that matter can be learned.
People want a real human in their corner
Dave has watched the travel industry change through every major shift, from a time before the internet and mobile phones, when customers paid their deposit by posting a cheque, through the rise of online booking and now the arrival of AI.
His view is that none of it has removed the need for a real person. If anything, the pandemic proved the opposite. When everything shut down, the people who had booked online had nowhere to turn.
“You can book online many times, but it’s only when something happens that you need someone in your corner.”
He describes the modern travel consultant as a kind of GPS for people trying to navigate travel, someone who offers advice, reassurance and a human being to call when something goes wrong. Even after 37 years, Dave does not book his own holidays. He rings someone he trusts, who asked him a single question, “Dave, do you trust me?” That, he says, is the whole business in a sentence.
“Everyone is a salesperson”
A worry we hear constantly from people new to the industry is that they are not salespeople. Dave dismantles that idea gently.
He points out that sales, in the narrow sense of exchanging goods for money, is the very last thing that happens. Everything before it is relationship. He uses the barber as his example. He has used the same barber for 20 years, not because they are the cheapest, but because of the trust built over time.
“You’ve got to think about yourself as a person first, the warmth and how you make people feel. That’s the most important thing.”
The single most valuable quality, in his view, is empathy. His advice to new consultants is to turn the computer off, pick up a pen and paper, and simply listen to what a holiday means to that person. Never assume someone wants cheap, or hot, or a beach. Understand them first. As he puts it, it is very hard not to buy something from a genuinely nice person.
The support that begins the moment training ends
Dave is most animated on this subject, because he has seen how other companies do it.
“I remember my first day. They said, there’s the phone, there’s the brochures, that’s going to ring. That was it.”
The Travel Franchise is built to be the opposite. On the final day of your training week, you meet your Business Consultant, someone Dave calls a “guardian angel.” They are your coach, mentor and accountability partner for the life of your business, and the first thing they do is listen to your story and understand your reasons for starting.
From there, the work is structured around four pillars. First, your audience, meaning who you would sell holidays to and why they would buy from you. Second, activity, the practical business of contacting people and creating enquiries. Third, the sales process itself, turning those enquiries into bookings. And fourth, confidence, because some people have the audience but need encouragement to be brave, and the team steps in alongside them.
In the early days you might speak to your Business Consultant a couple of times a week. That relationship then continues for as long as you are with us.
A whole team behind every consultant
The Business Consultant is only the beginning. Dave was keen to spell out the full structure behind every franchisee, because it is one of the things that sets the business apart. We have the best ratio of support team to franchisee in the industry, and it is not a coincidence.
There is an operations team that looks after the bookings you make, liaising with airlines, hotels and suppliers, handling tickets and making sure everything is done correctly. There is a dedicated support team for any question that does not go through your Business Consultant. There is a finance team that pays your commissions. And there is a marketing team producing professional images and content for you to use.
“The support never goes away. We’re not a nine to five business. We’re there when you need us.”
Built around your life, not the other way round
More than 90 per cent of our consultants join with no travel experience at all, and many start part time, around an existing job or family commitments. We do not impose sales targets, and we do not ask anyone to quit their job before they are ready.
Dave prefers the term “key time” to part time. The busiest window for booking holidays is between 5pm and 9pm, along with weekends, which fits neatly around a day job or around children. He works with each person around the hours they genuinely have, building a marketing plan to match, and creating what he calls a “tipping point,” the moment a consultant decides they are ready to go full time, worked towards deliberately rather than left to chance.
He gives the example of a part-time teacher he works with who teaches three days a week and builds the business around the rest, weekends included.
There is a holiday for every month of the year
One of the biggest misconceptions among people outside the industry is that travel is only busy in summer. Dave explains that the reverse is true. The peak booking season, known in the trade as “peaks,” runs from January through March, when people escape the post-Christmas gloom by booking their next trip.
After that comes “lates” season in May, June and July, then ski bookings in late summer and autumn, then Christmas markets and winter breaks. September, he says, is one of the most underrated months of all, because so many people return from summer holidays already wanting to book the next one. This is where our “welcome home calls” come in, checking in with a client after their trip and asking where they would like to go next.
“A month can be as busy as you want it to be. It’s determined by the activity you create.”
There is a practical point here for anyone considering joining. Because there is an onboarding process, checks, and a full week of training that runs only once a month, getting started takes a little time. If you want to be ready and trading before the next peaks season, it is worth beginning the process well in advance rather than waiting.
Training that takes you around the world
Dave also leads many of the events and overseas retreats that run throughout the year, and he regards them as an integral part of building a business rather than a perk.
He described a recent retreat to Turkey where 60 business owners spent a week combining classroom sessions on finding and retaining customers with resort tours, social media opportunities and, crucially, networking with other consultants doing exactly the same thing. Many come away having made friends for life. He is off to Mauritius next, then Cyprus, and the calendar also includes UK weekend events, momentum days shortly after your induction, and even seminars at sea on cruise ships.
Two of these overseas retreats are included in the Elite package, and Dave is clear about their value. They are unique to us, and they take consultants further both as business owners and as travellers.
The opportunity, in numbers
Dave was happy to talk figures, because our model is refreshingly simple. When a consultant books a holiday, we take a percentage of the sale, which means we only succeed when our consultants succeed. We are genuinely invested in helping them do well.
Multi-generational family trips, weddings, honeymoons, groups and cruises can all run into tens of thousands of pounds, and Dave mentioned one recent booking worth £197,000. Cruise in particular has become a huge part of the business, with dedicated launch events and loyal repeat customers.
Bookings of £50,000, once a rarity, now happen regularly across the network.
What it all adds up to
Starting your own business will always carry a degree of the unknown. What comes across clearly from a conversation with Dave Pope is how much of that uncertainty this business is designed to remove. A guardian angel from day one. A structured plan built around your life. An entire team handling the admin, the operations, the finance and the marketing behind you. And a community of people who have walked exactly the path you are considering.
You bring the willingness to start and the warmth to build relationships. Everything else, we teach you.
