Richards brings nearly 30 years of travel industry experience to the role, including more than a decade as the Global Travel Group’s director of commercial. She left Not Just Travel where she was chief of staff in February.

"The combination of her commercial contacts and experience in managing large-scale homeworking and high street networks complements TSN’s experienced ‘outsourcing’ team, which will allow us to expand both elements of our business rapidly," said TSN chief executive Garry Winterburn.

Launched in February, TSN offers a new homeworking model for travel professionals who may have left the industry in recent years, designed to utilise their knowledge and expertise while giving them the time and tools to focus on developing their own client base.

It is initially offering flexible call centre support while industry staffing levels remain stretched following the Covid crisis and has so far forged a partnership with social media travel brand Trending Travel. Negotiations, said TSN on Thursday (19 May), are ongoing with a range of other firms with several more "major partnerships" expected to be announced in the next month.

TSN chair Steve Endacott said the business had initially been looking to recruit between 30 and 100 people this year, but was now targeting 150 owing to the demand for TSN’s outsourced call centre capacity.

"I am very excited to be joining the TSN team," said Richards. "Having seen the calibre of people involved in the business, it was always going to be one to watch. So when I was approached about heading the development of their homeworkers and/or travel agency partner network, joining such an ambitious and rapidly expanding business was an easy decision."

TSN was founded in February by Garry and Lindsey Winterburn, with backing from Steve Endacott. Ruth Endacott is the business’s managing director, while ex-Tui Group finance director Will Waggott and former MyTravel chief executive Richard Carrick have come onboard as shareholders and non-executive directors.

Video call focus

Steve Endacott said that while the devastating impact of Covid-19 on travel industry staff had created an obvious business opportunity, it was TSN’s flexible homeworking model that was key to attracting new recruits allowing them to service and grow their client bases while gaining secure income from outsourced call centre work.

"Rather than restaffing single-location call centres that often have a 40%-plus staff turnover per year, partners are seeing the benefits of using TSN’s national homeworking network on an ‘as needed’ basis to deal with daily, weekly or seasonal peaks in call demand," said Endacott.

The business provides homeworkers their own bookable website, social media toolkits and centrally produced deals, as well as a video conferencing service which pulls them out of the call centre flow when they have a scheduled call and an online diary.

"It is vital for homeworkers to be the face of their brand, but the more TSN can support them centrally, the better," said Richards. "As a group, we can afford to employ staff centrally to make homeworkers’ lives easier by either assisting with booking administration or creating ‘flash sale’ deals agents can promote locally."

She added: "Not all agents will welcome this shift from the phone [to video calling] but those who do embrace it will often see 30%-plus increases in conversion, as face-to-face video calls not only create better bonds with customers, but also allow agents to tweak recommendations based on customers’ visual reactions."