Director Richard Light said he was targeting another two shops, and after taking on a homeworker a year or so ago, is hopeful of growing homeworker numbers to around 20 before 2025.
Experience It Now Travel currently has stores in Eastbourne, Peacehaven and Seaford, plus another site in Newhaven, which is not currently open.
Light hopes to reopen the Newhaven site and run it as a training hub once he has recruited some new staff. “We’re looking at opening more shops in the West Sussex area, but we’re just considering our options at the moment,” he said.
He said he was previously “torn” between opening more shops and recruiting more homeworkers to join the existing one who was recruited a year ago. “When opening a shop there are obvious costs involved such as staff and rent,” explained Light.
“From our experience with other shops you are probably only going to break even after a few years. Having a homeworking division is a much lower cost base. There’s the training element, but you get a quicker return on investment. Homeworking is a very busy field.”
A recent recruitment drive saw 20 people apply for homeworker sales roles. Light said the agency is currently looking at hiring six homeworkers from that initial pool of applicants. “We then want to be up to 20 by November 2024,” he explained.
“Every homeworking company is looking for experienced people, but unfortunately there’s a lack of experienced staff around.”
Light said unlike many agencies, he and his team were not fazed by the prospect of having to train staff. “We’ve recently taken on three or four staff with no travel experience,” he said.
“We’re quite confident with our training methods. We’ve got a training manager, who puts the training programme together and decides when the new starter comes into the shop for training and when they’re trained on Zoom.”
He highlighted how two Experience It Now shop managers have less than two years’ experience. “We believe with our training methods new starters can sell a holiday on their own within six weeks of joining,” Light added.
“There are experienced staff on hand to assist them and there are staff WhatsApp groups where people can ask questions.”
Light added the training was based around the systems and the suppliers that Experience It Now Travel uses.
“The new homeworkers coming into the business can be trained in the shops in the same way a member of the retail staff would be trained,” he said. “After the training has been completed, they can hot desk in the shops and meet customers.”
Light admitted he does look to see if applicants have previous travel industry experience. “If they’ve not done travel before, they need to have some sort of experience like recruitment or estate agent,” he added. “Anyone with any travel experience is good.”
When asked about the products the agency sells, Light said: “We’re an all-rounder, of course. “We do sell a lot of easyJet holidays being based near Gatwick and we sell a lot of cruise because we’re only two hours’ drive from Southampton.
“We’ve done a couple of £50,000 bookings in the Eastbourne store. October was our best-ever month – we were 64% up year-on-year – and we surpassed January 2023 which was another good month. Almost one in three bookings are cruise currently.”
