It was January 2020, and Francesca Mendola was looking at the bookings for some top clients, but she’d never seen anything like it: instead of business increasing into the spring, it was dramatically slipping. Concerned, she phoned the client in London, who admitted that people were growing nervous over the outbreak of Covid-19.
As global account manager for the world’s largest collection of international luxury travel agencies under Global Travel Collection – where brands include Colletts Travel, Protravel International and Tzell Travel Group – Mendola immediately flagged the update to her team.
Two months later, the planet went into lockdown. “Business just came to a standstill,” she says. But rather than press the panic button, Mendola decided to take a step back and analyse where the up side could be. “This was a perfect time to look at the business and ask, ‘where do we want to be when this is done?’.”
With this strategic mindset, Mendola wasn’t looking for the business to just recover from the pandemic – she was determined for it to come back stronger.
It was during this period of uncertainty that Mendola realised just how beneficial GTC could be to its members.
“This was really traumatic for a lot of agents,” Mendola recalls. “I became their trusted person to say, ‘business is going to be okay’. And that got me thinking – when we come out of the pandemic, how do we provide for our agents, and how do we make sure they feel supported, versus just being on their own island?”
Making a plan
After noticing this demand for increased guidance, Mendola decided to draw up a proposal that would go on to completely overhaul strategy.
“I put together a business plan to Jason [Oshiokpekhai], managing director of GTC UK, off my own back. We needed to move from a reactive to a proactive state, acting as consultants to our agent members’ business. We needed to be more in tune with them,” she says.
Another glaring issue Mendola highlighted was that at the time, the GTC brand had a fairly low profile in the industry. “Nobody knew about us; we had no PR, we had nothing in marketing.”
A brand awareness team, offering independent advisors support in media opportunities, was also introduced. Kirsty Chan joined as senior PR and communications executive at the company, and reiterates to TTG Luxury that since the introduction of these changes, GTC UK has doubled its numbers of clients.
GTC’s Advisor Success programme now assigns every single agent their own account manager and GTC global president Angie Licea has since gone on to say that both Jason and Francesca “have contributed significantly to the growth of Global Travel Collection over the years and have been integral to the establishment and advancement of the Advisor Success Organisation”.
Spotting success
As for Mendola, it’s clear her strategic approach and hard work paid off. Last November, after 12 years in the industry, she was promoted to a role as GTC UK’s vice president. It’s quite a change from her early travel career days in sales at London properties such as the Sloane Square Hotel in Chelsea and The Stafford, but Mendola now believes her background in the supplier side of the industry has also greatly benefited her in this current position.
“If we’re doing anything with our suppliers, I know we need to make sure the right people are there from the advisor side, so that the suppliers investing in us get the long term return,” she explains.
As for her advice to others looking to excel in their own careers, Mendola encourages taking as much initiative as possible. “Put your ideas out there, to show how you could be as a leader,” she advises. She also highlights the importance of strong mentors, many of whom, for her, have been women.
“The female leaders I had in hospitality were very ambitious, very driven and very keen to teach,” she recalls, before adding she has inherited much of this management DNA in her current role.
She says she is also appreciative of her past mentors’ empathy in the workplace, another quality she believes is crucial to a healthy team, as well as their ability to demonstrate how they could pursue both a career and motherhood. “It was very refreshing to see that early in my working life,” she says.
As for what’s next for Global Travel Collection, Mendola is excited to continue building its already stellar reputation.
“We’re looking at streamlining the brands so people understand that we are the place of the independent luxury travel advisor in the marketplace,” she says. “We’re continually enhancing the tools and products that we’re working to give our advisors everything they need to support their business too.”
On a personal note, Mendola says she is immersing herself in all opportunities to meet new people that can help grow both her as leader, and Global Travel Collection as a business.
“I’m really enjoying the collaboration with our US teams for example, bringing the diversity of thought across the business,” she says. “And just in the past four months, meeting female leaders at this level that I’ve never had exposure to has been fantastic – having that ability to expand your network is brilliant.”
