Not Just Travel wins Cruise Awards Best Homeworking Agency for 2022
Not Just Travel was presented with the Cruise Award for BEST HOMEWORKING AGENCY 2022 in a lavish ceremony aboard The Cutty Sark in Greenwich, London last month. Run by CRUISE ADVISER, the leading cruise publication for the travel trade, the Cruise Awards recognises the very best companies in travel.
How We Got Here – The Cruise Mastery Programme
NOT JUST TRAVEL is a leading UK travel franchise with over 500 franchisees. We’re keen to help our homeworking consultants react to industry trends. In fact, we’ve built a whole department around the cruise boom – our Cruise Division – employing experts that teach franchisees everything they know about cruising via learning-based modules and webinars over a 15-month period. Members get access to our key cruise partners and exclusive offers, a dedicated website and more. We’re thrilled that all our hard work in this area has been recognised by The Cruise Awards and by our franchisees like Jenifer, who recently made a £40k cruise booking or Moses who secured an amazing £1million booking.
Every agent that signs up to voluntary The Cruise Mastery Programme gets invited on a Seminar at Sea, a cruise with experts who will offer further training onboard to include mentorship and business insights. Over 200 of our travel consultants – plus head office team members – recently attended our inaugural Seminar at Sea aboard the new luxury NCL Norwegian Prima with cruise experts and famous personalities including BBC Presenter Zara Janjua and brand champion, Olympic medal winner, Daley Thompson, who shared their tips on everything from social media videos to a winning mindset.
“Not Just Travel are clear winners in their category. Judges told us they were highly impressed by the number of key initiatives Not Just Travel implemented to grow cruising. These include its travel podcast, its in-person events and the way it utilised PR channels to capitalise on the demand for seacations, converting them into long-term repeat cruise bookers.”
Samuel Ballard, managing director of Cruise Adviser and its awards
The judges - members of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) – said they were impressed by Not Just Travel’s significant investment in people, technology and events during the pandemic, that led to a four-fold increase in cruise sales from pre-pandemic level. They also admired Not Just Travel’s continuous innovation and initiatives - our repeat customers have grown from 20% to 60% this year.
“Once again, we’ve beaten off stiff competition to prove ourselves the best in business. Our consultants show they provide the ultimate expertise and customer service in this lucrative, but complex market. Our total cruise sales this year has already beaten the entirety of last year’s. But we’re not stopping there. We have launched our new Cruise Division to boost franchisees’ sales in the market and our Cruise Mastery training programme, which takes our already-expert travel consultants and immerses them in intensive cruise-specific training to become industry Masters.”
Co-Founder of Not Just Travel Paul Harrison
This comes after multiple awards and nominations for Not Just Travel in recent months. We’ve also won Homeworking Agency of the Year (now 6x winners) and Sustainability Champion of the Year, while co-founders Paul & Steve have been nominated in multiple entrepreneurship awards including the Great British Entrepreneur and British Business Excellence. We’re also Elite Business Awards Best Travel Franchise in the UK and finalists in Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Awards and the 25th Annual Growing Business Awards.