Homeworking business Your Endless Travel is looking to expand by taking on experienced homeworking agents, who will in turn help to mentor new-to-travel recruits.
Ross Griffiths and Luke Skinner, co-owners of the Hereford-based agency, are seeking agents with more than five years of travel sales experience.
Preferably they will have skills selling mid to long-haul destinations and multi-centre tailormade itineraries – alongside experience of packaging their own products and ideally two or more years of leadership and management experience.
They will also mentor agents who join a “new-to-travel” pathway, which will feature a training academy which will launch this summer.
Skinner said: “To support our continued growth, we are looking for a number of experienced agents to join our freelance team.
“In addition to industry-leading commission splits of up to 70% and the availability of sales leads generated by our marketing efforts…this next intake of experienced agents will have the opportunity to take on the mentorship of one of our new-to-travel recruits. and be rewarded financially for supporting them,” said Skinner.
He noted the scheme had always been part of the agency’s longer-term plan but added: “We are getting a lot of enquiries from potential agents currently not working in the travel industry and wanting to get involved.
More: Homeworking business Your Endless Travel launches recruitment drive
“We know there are existing opportunities for them in the industry, but we feel that there is a niche for a company offering tailored support, in-depth training on product and systems, and mentoring from experienced agents.
“So we have brought forward our plans for our training academy, which will launch this summer.
“Therefore this recruitment drive is an effort to bring on board a few more experienced agents who may be interested in mentoring the first batch of new-to-travel agents.”
Your Endless Travel will also have a full-time training manager running the academy and training the team.
“This is something we feel will help our offering stand out – the mentors won’t be expected to teach the new recruits everything [as] that will be the training manager’s job,” he continued.
“They will be there to give the team the benefit of their experience and those bits of knowledge that you soak up over years in the industry.”
He said the agency is “highly selective” about the homeworkers it takes on.
“We’d rather grow more slowly…with the right agents, than growing fast for the sake of it,” he said.
“Our marketing efforts have been going really well and we’re generating lots of high-value enquiries for exciting long-haul destinations so we have plenty for new agents to work on.”
Griffiths added: “We are currently generating more enquiries than we or our current homeworkers can handle, especially for destinations such as Canada and Japan, as well as niche products like long-haul ski, so we are particularly interested in speaking to agents or operators looking at homeworking opportunities with these areas of specialism.”
Initially, each experienced agent will mentor one new-to-travel homeworker at a time, for 12 months.
“Once they’ve spent a year with one mentee, we might give them two the following year if they want to develop that part of their business. But there’s no pressure,” said Skinner.
“We expect experienced agents to outnumber new-to-travel agents at all times.
“The training manager will also be tasked with supporting agents in the mentoring process.”
Furthermore, agents can be based across the UK or overseas.
The Protected Trust Services member already has one homeworker living and working in Colombia, who specialises in Latin America.
Katie Hollinshead, product and operations manager, spent January working from Cape Town so that she could skydive more.
“We’re also in talks with an agent who spends the winters in Thailand,” added Skinner.
“It has always been part of our plan to support agents who want to work remotely from overseas.
“We feel that if people are working in travel, getting the opportunity to spend time overseas makes sense.”
Pictured from left: Ross Griffiths, homeworker Suzy O’Sullivan, product and operations manager Katie Hollinshead and Luke Skinner.
