It’s such a compliment when the biggest publications in the industry come to you for their source of news – confident in the knowledge we’ll have something new to unveil; an initiative to launch or simply have another inspirational success story that they can shout about.
Over the past few months, we’ve certainly been racking up the column inches. Recently, we even dominated the whole front cover of one of the biggest trade magazines, Travel Weekly (Steve and Paul, our co-founders, made fantastic models!).
Here’s a quick snapshot of what’s been in the news over just the past month:
Innovations
Back in June all the talk was of our groundbreaking cruise website: Not Just Cruise.
Launched to simplify what can notoriously be a complicated booking process, this tool, exclusive to Not Just Travel, allows our agents to filter cruises by holiday type, cruise line, departure point, destination and price range and give them all the info they need on deck plans and cabins – all on one single portal. No other company has anything like it – once again giving our agents an advantageous head start when it comes to enjoying a (larger) slice of what is among the most lucrative sector of the industry.
Educational Retreats
Our recent Seminar at Sea onboard Virgin Voyages’ Valiant Lady was hailed an ‘incredible success’. Agents were making bookings just hours after boarding!!
With 150 agents on board, they got to experience all the delights of the cruise first-hand – all as part of our Cruise Mastery Programme. While cruising around the Med, they also got to learn more about the lucrative cruise industry during a series of morning seminars.
But it certainly wasn’t all work – as was clearly demonstrated when we went viral on Tik Tok and made a (fully-clothed) splash across all the trade papers!
Recruitment
Supporting our consultants is our top priority, which is why at head office we continue to attract and recruit the very best in the business as mentors and trainers.
Over the last 12 months we’ve seen some big names join us including cruise guru Gemma Outram as cruise business development manager and Chris Harrison as commercial director.
This appointment comes on the back of us announcing that industry heavyweight Derek Jones, former managing director of Kuoni, is now a member on our board as a non-exec director. You don’t get better than this!
Recognition
We love an award and our trophy cabinet is bulging!
Without blowing our own trumpet (OK, perhaps just a little, cos we’re proud of our achievements) we’ve been shortlisted for no end of accolades lately.
In the past few weeks alone we’ve brought home the award for Eco Franchise of the Year at the inaugural Disruptive Franchise Awards 2023 and last week our very own travel consultant, David Walker, became the proud holder of the Travel Agent of the Year award!
Investment
Only last month we made it known that we’ve committed to investing a further £1 million in recruitment – that’s in addition to the £2.4 million we’ve already invested since the beginning of 2022.
But it’s not just in new recruits that we’re ploughing our money. We’re also intent on supporting and retaining our current staff. Only recently the news headlines were shouting about our initiative to support our corporate staff with £500 each year to spend on well-being or self-development programmes. Another demonstration of how we nurture everyone who is part of our ‘family’.
