Cumbria Travel directors Leanne Miller and Tricia Rickerby tell Samantha Mayling about the decision to set up their agency 10 years ago
Q. What is your background?
Leanne: I started at 16, on a Lunn Poly Youth Training Scheme. At 21, I was a Sunset Holidays rep in Salou.
Back here, I went to Going Places then AT Mays – which became Carlson Worldchoice – and Thomas Cook.
Tricia: I had work experience at WH Smith Travel in 1986. After a week, they offered me a Saturday job. A year later, I went full-time. From there I went to Exchange Travel, then moved to work for Virgin Atlantic and Dan Air. I returned in 1993 to work at Co-op Travelcare. When I had children, I took a career break, then worked in an estate agency, Co-op Travel and Thomas Cook.
Q. Why did you join Barrhead’s Brilliant Travel consortium?
Leanne: A friend had success with Brilliant Travel and after meeting them, we felt they were our fit.
Tricia: Meeting Linda Pyle and Darby Gallagher, we liked the way they operated. We have access to Barrhead’s commercial terms and exclusive cruise groups. We’ve won Brilliant Travel awards – as well as Jet2holidays and local awards.
Q. How did you manage during the pandemic?
Leanne: We had to close our Carlisle shop to save Whitehaven and Workington, which was the hardest thing ever. We went into Covid with a team of 32 and came out with fewer than 10. There were lots of tears.
Tricia: It was awful. Our third store opened in 2019 and had an amazing first year. It was a gutting decision to close it.
Q. How has the agency bounced back?
Leanne: We’ve gone from strength to strength, reporting our best years. We have a team of 27, including three apprentices. Our homeworking team looks after social media enquiries and enables trading seven days a week. We also have cruise and luxury brands.
Tricia: It was difficult to recruit so we took on staff with no experience, and apprentices – they’re amazing. Our main page has more than 44,000 Facebook followers.
Q. What trends are you seeing?
Leanne: Popular destinations include Turkey, Tenerife, Caribbean and the US. Safaris and Japan have surged. Sales look good. A few people are price-conscious, with more asking about payment plans. Sometimes we get a ‘mega’ booking, usually to celebrate special occasions.
Tricia: Florida and Thailand are popular too. We had our best year in 2024, and 2025 started well. No day is the same – 2026 bookings, last-minute deals, people looking further afield, city breaks. We’ve sold multi-generational cruises, plus a Dubai and Seychelles wedding.
Q. When is your next holiday or fam trip?
Leanne: My last fam was in 2019 – an amazing Route 66 trip with USAirtours. We tend to prioritise fams for team members. My own holidays are family based; this year we’re staying at Disney and Universal in Florida.
Tricia: I love cruising. I’ve cruised with Celebrity Cruises since I went on the Celebrity Edge launch [January 2018].
Q. How do you find customers?
Leanne: Many have been with us since we started. Social media is massive, plus we do billboard marketing, radio at peak times and set up [email platform] Mailchimp in January, with more than 12k subscribers already. Our chosen charity is Cash for Kids; we’ve raised thousands over the years from raffles at our holiday show, along with cake sales and bingo on our exclusive coach trips.
Tricia: We’ve advertised on vans, buses and boards at football grounds. We also sponsor local teams and take work experience school pupils.
Q. What do you have coming up?
Leanne: To be open to new ideas and maintain a happy workplace. We celebrated our 10th anniversary in December. It’s amazing to mark 10 years – I feel like we’ve blinked and now we’re here. It’s a whirlwind!
Tricia: We’ll celebrate more later this year, because the start of 2025 has been so busy.
Leanne: I was on maternity leave with my second daughter and not looking forward to returning to Thomas Cook – it was changing massively. A drunken conversation with Trish at a hen do further sowed the seeds. She thought I was joking until I messaged the next day, saying I was serious. It was about flexibility as I had a two-year-old and a baby. My days of preparing team talks at 8am were gone and I didn’t like the way the business was headed with directional selling. I am a firm believer in ‘customer first’. It’s about matching the customer’s needs, not what someone tells you to sell. I believe this policy has contributed to our success and built our loyal following.
Tricia: We worked together for a few weeks when Thomas Cook took over Co-op Travel. On a hen night for a mutual friend, Leanne asked me about opening a store together. We wanted to bring an independent agency back to Whitehaven. It was followed two years later by a second store in Dunmail Park Shopping Centre, Workington. Ten years have flown by, but when we reflected on our awards and achievements, it blew me away.
