Sarah Turner joins from Railbookers and will be responsible for Cox & Kings’ southern region.

Laura Dawson, meanwhile, joins the operator from APT and will be responsible for the Midlands and the north.

Both Turner and Dawson will report to Greg Thurston, who has been promoted to head of agency sales.

Turner was responsible for helping launch Railbookers to the trade while Dawson brings four years’ experience as an APT account manager.

Thurston said Turner and Dawson “bring with them a wealth of experience, enthusiasm and passion for travel; ideal attributes to help us in our mission to work even closer with travel agents and homeworkers across the UK”.

“We are committed to supporting our agent partners, and with the addition of these two fantastic people to our agency sales team, we have never been better placed to do just that,” he added.

“Sarah and Laura will be hitting the road over the coming months getting to know our existing partners, delivering training on our wide ranging programme of tours, offering one-on-one support and promoting our revamped agent Loyalty Club.

"We have lots of fantastic new initiatives planned for the coming months and we can’t wait to get started.”