Owner of York-based Quartz Travel, Paul Smith told TTG the time was now right to expand his business, and that he was keen to shake up the traditional homeworking model – by providing an office space for homeworkers to come together rather than having to work from home all the time.

Space has been set aside at both the Quartz head office in York as well as at Amigo Travel – a travel agency owned by Quartz and in the same city, which offers low-cost holidays.

Smith told TTG he had spent nine months researching the sector to identify a niche in the market.

“We thought ‘how can we attract people from larger homeworkers to come and work for us’. The home-workers that we spoke to said they were lonely at home and so we thought about how we could approach it differently,” Smith said.

“We wanted to create a space for a sense of camaraderie where people can get together, and somewhere for the homeworkers to invite their customers to come in if they wanted to meet face-to-face. Some don’t like bringing strangers to their door.”

The homeworking division, which launches this week, will be called “The Library”, to reflect the fact that homeworkers will be “borrowing the space and sharing stories and travel knowledge with each other”, Smith said.

For the first few months, homeworkers will be required to work a set number of hours in the office space, and will need to let the company know which hours they will be there, but after that will be able to drop in as and when they wish.