Why The Travel Franchise offers its homeworking travel consultants free mentorship retreats abroad

Want to be your own boss, work from the comfort of your home, create a business worth over a million pounds and learn the secrets of being an entrepreneur while enjoying a free holiday in the sun?

The Travel Franchise has some innovative strategies and one of them is that it has trained hundreds of people new to travel to become homeworking agents in less than a week.

It also believes it has found the winning formula for taking its travel consultants to the next level and scale up fast: a free training retreat abroad with expert workshops and one-to-ones with high-performing travel agents and entrepreneurs.

We ask Steve Witt, co-founder of The Travel Franchise and its customer-facing brand Not Just Travel, to explain.

What is the Elite Experience?

It’s where we take up to 25 franchisees on a free luxury six-day mentorship retreat, typically, to a long-haul destination. The hotel, flights, transfers, excursions, most of the food and training is paid for by us.

Who is eligible to go?

Consultants must be on our Elite (or above) franchise package and have been in the business at least six months and have built a solid foundation, earning decent commission, at least £5,000 pounds but typically more. This will be their second mentorship trip abroad as they would have already experienced our Millionaire’s Retreat first.

How does it differ from the Millionaire’s Retreat?

The Millionaire’s Retreat teaches consultants how to be an entrepreneur but this trip coaches agents how to skyrocket their business and take it to a whole new level. It’s a smaller group, so we can do a lot more in small groups or on a one-to-one basis tailoring mentoring to each individual. Consultants get to spend quality time with travel experts and entrepreneurs like me, and co-founder Paul Harrison, who have built very successful businesses. We look at what agents have achieved so far, help establish their goals and devise a plan how they can achieve them. We also offer training on specific subjects such as social media.

How has it enabled some people’s business to skyrocket?

When NJT travel consultant, David Walker, came on the Elite Experience many years ago, he gave us his business plan and during that trip, Paul and I physically tore up his business plan in front of him and said his goals were not aspirational enough. He said he wanted to grow his business by a third because typically that's what people say – they set a ceiling of what they think is possible. We told him to ditch that idea and helped him create a brand new plan that saw him triple his business.

Why can’t you make that big difference from the very beginning?

Agents need to run their own businesses for a while to see what works and what doesn't and also know what they want – not all our consultants work full time. They decide their hours and targets, we just help them achieve their goals.

What sort of experts are on the retreat?

We take other successful travel consultants along with us, the high-achieving ones such David Walker and Colman Coyne, because they make it real. Agents like to learn from people who have been there, done it and got the t-shirt.

Many consultants who have experienced the trip say they would pay thousands of pounds for the coaching that we give, especially in such incredible locations.

Where have you held previous Elite Experiences?

One of our recent Elite Experiences took place in Mexico and we've also been to Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

What sort of hotels do you typically stay in?

Really nice ones! We tend to stay at two high-end hotels and while we can't guarantee every one will be five-star, even the four-star hotels we've stayed in have been amazing. We also visit a few other hotels in the area and enjoy some fantastic activities such as sailing or 4x4 dune bashing in the desert. We get treated like royalty by the hotels and tourist boards while we are there because consultants are the people who bring in the tourists and boost the local economy. Many agents snapshots on social media while they are there and go home raving about the destination and there’s often a huge uplift in sales to that particular resort.

So it’s not all work and no play?

We work hard but we also have a lot of fun, too. We eat incredible food and we often get to experience cool things that you wouldn't normally get to do or see. While we were in Abu Dhabi, for example, we had a tour of the Etihad Innovation Centre, which is where the airline, Etihad, mocks up its future first-class cabins with butler service and other top notch experiences on board.

Do you offer any other trips?

We’ve organised a few, such as a golf trip to Mauritius and a ski holiday in Aspen but there's no training on these trips. While these are not free they are hugely subsidised and it’s more about experiencing a destination, the sport in that location and enjoying the sense of fun community than learning business skills. We also have a charity trek, next year to the Inca Trail in Peru.