My journey in travel started in the 1980s when, as a 14-year-old, I got a Saturday job in a – now long-since gone – travel agency in the heart of Manchester.
It was all teletext machines and postcards in the window back then, but it gave me a foothold. I eventually worked my way up to become assistant manager at Topps Tours in Blackpool in the early nineties, another name now sadly lost.
Like many others at that time who were burnt by the recession, necessity required me to use the skills I’d developed as an agent in other ways.
In the 25 years since Topps closed, I found myself doing everything from running an engineering firm to being managing director of our local commercial radio station, Centre FM. For a while, I was an estate agent – even a pub landlady.
But since 2020 it has been via my latest incarnation as a female empowerment coach I’ve finally found the confidence to listen to the voice at the back of my mind that had been whispering to me all along.
Even though I’d long ago "left" travel, I never really stopped being a travel agent. Friends and family frequently turned to me for advice on where to go and where to get the best deals, and had started to rely on me for making their bookings.
Equally, my own love for visiting new places never diminished. The call had always been there, but the clattering of life’s hamster wheel – marriage, children, a career – had drowned it out. I was successful, but unsatisfied.
Ironically, as a female empowerment coach, I was actually spending my time helping other women live their best lives and encouraging them to have the confidence to go from "hidden to happy". But I wasn’t practising what I preached.
So I finally did what I help my clients do, which is to put their faith in their passions. I started to promote myself through social media as an independent home-based travel agent available to help make friends, family and people in my community’s travel dreams a reality.
It was a risk. When I started out in travel, homeworking wasn’t an option for agents – you worked in a shop and that was it. The way travel operates now is a far cry from the industry in which I started. Customers are much savvier and more adventurous, and the technology that powers things is light years ahead.
’Purpose and passion’
However, as much as I loved being "that person" who created wonderful memories for my clients, in many ways, I had to re-learn the job.
I quickly realised that if I was to successfully marry up and maximise my personal love for travel with the commercial skills I’d gained during my career, in a way that fitted around the rest of my life, doing it on my own would only get me so far. I would need the support of a business which would empower me to be the agent I wanted to be.
For me, travel has always been about quality rather than quantity – discovering new and interesting ways to really experience a place, its people and customs.
