Geraldine Marshall, who started Marshall Travel from home in late 2019, has already “smashed January and February targets” for 2024 since once again going solo as a homeworker.

Marshall opened the Marshall Travel branch in Cross Arthurlie Street, Barrhead, Glasgow in November 2022, but a combination of rising overheads, staffing issues and a dry spell of walk-ins from new customers, with custom prominently from known and repeat clients, led to her shutting its doors for the final time in October 2023.

“I was absolutely gutted and there were a couple of tears shed, but it was definitely the right decision,” Marshall told TTG, pointing to her single handedly achieving sales totalling £45,000 this January so far – compared to a full-month total of £38,000 in-store in the same month last year. 

“I was worried about how this January was going to go for me, but I’ve smashed my targets for January and February,” she said.

“I’ve decided to go back to basics,” Marshall affirmed, pointing to examples where she is now visiting clients in their homes or meeting them to retain face-to-face contact. 

“One of my clients told me they actually prefer this to being in a shop environment,” Marshall added.    

But one of her biggest drawbacks, she said, was staffing.

“The overheads were getting too much, but staffing was absolutely abysmal to be honest. A lot of it was down to a lack of experience, but they were also unreliable. I spent a lot of time putting in an ethos of the level of service I would expect and being clear that we were talking about more than a transaction with our clients.” 

“I was more focused on training them, which took away from my time with clients.”

Marshall candidly said becoming a homeworker once again has helped her regain a work/life balance, with less worry about the bills and staff turning up, freeing more time to get her day-to-day work done and “spend quality time on marketing”.

She revealed she may consider opening a shop again in the future, but “let’s take baby steps. Right now, I’m going back to basics”.

Marshall said her strongest demand was for long haul and tailor-made holidays, selling to groups. She was also quick to praise the virtues of Tui – adding that she was proactively selling the operator’s product, a point echoed by industry peers, she revealed.

“I’m favouring Tui over Jet2 at the moment. A lot of us are choosing to promote Tui, and I think they’re back on their game [with the trade].”