Travology Travel, founded in June 2020 by Lucy Clarke, is gearing up to unveil its new website next month, which is being built by travel technology specialist Simon Andrews, owner of Built by Inspired.
Clarke told TTG she hoped the extended website functionality would be a strong USP for her burgeoning Chester-based operation, one she said she believed could be a template for other travel businesses in future.
“The website will be dedicated to affordable homeworking, and I’m the first user,” said Travology director Clarke. "The aim is to enable our homeworkers to upload their own offers and have their own pages.
"Simon has worked in the industry for 30 years – he asked what I thought homeworkers would need. We tried to think of everything possible so he can use our website as a prototype to promote to other companies."
Clarke said recruitment had been a challenge, something she put down to people underestimating just how difficult the job was. “We had 10 [homeworkers] by the end of last year, which was our goal, but a couple have since dropped out," she said.
"You may have been a travel agent for many years, but with homeworking, you’ve got to build up your own client base – people think it’s easier than it really is."
Clarke, who has more than 20 years’ travel industry experience after starting her career aged 16 with Going Places and then Thomas Cook, cited Travel Counsellors as a inspiration and model for her business, but said she wanted to keep it relatively "small-scale".
"Obviously, if things change in a year’s time and I suddenly get a lot of people joining, it would be great to get to 20, but that’s probably my limit and where I’d stay."
She praised her team for some "amazing" bookings over the past nearly two years, with average sales prices ranging from £7,000 to £11,000. “So far it’s been great," said Clarke. "We’ve not had a full two years’ trading – to begin with, we were just booking the odd holiday, but I’d say we’ve had a good nine months now.
“The bookings are coming in all the time from the homeworkers, including me."
Travology has also launched The Honeymoon Trust, a way for friends and family to contribute towards a couple’s upcoming honeymoon. “Obviously, giving money is very popular. You can donate to the honeymoon and leave a message, and the couple will also be able to include the trust’s details in their invitations,” Clarke explained.
Clarke, who has also previously worked for ITC and Broadway Travel, and latterly with Protected Trust Services to help it establish more supplier partners, added that after many years imagining herself being a business owner, the reality still felt "strange”.
“I’ll have been in travel for 24 years next month, but it’s different running a business than selling travel," she said. "Understanding the back end of the travel business has been a learning curve, but it’s great."
