Your Stories: Husband and wife team on quitting corporate jobs to start We Do Travel

Q. Why did you set up We Do Travel?
We started in 2017. We’d lived in London for 10 years, both in quite corporate jobs, but decided to move back home to Scotland in 2013 after having two of our three kids. Eilidh decided she wanted to leave chartered accountancy to become a travel agent. She applied to agencies but didn’t get an interview because why would they employ someone from a chartered accountancy background with no travel experience? So we put that dream to bed while Eilidh had child number three. And then in 2017 we found this opportunity to join Explorer Travel’s franchise model, which is now part of the Hays Travel Independence Group.

Q. How’s trading been?
Within the first year, we’d earned enough to cover the fee to join the franchise and then it just took off. The period 2018-19 was really good – we were consistently between 50%-60% up every month. We maintained that until 2020, when obviously the pandemic happened and we lost everything, but we persevered and came out the other end. In peaks this year, we smashed it. We had a conversion rate of more than 70%, which we’ve never had before. Since then, it’s probably been 60%-65%. We’re the top-selling agents within Explorer Travel.

Q. What do you sell?
We don’t specialise at all. At the moment, about 40% of our business is short-haul, 30% cruise and 30% long‑haul. Before the pandemic, our cruise proportion was 0%-2% – we didn’t sell cruise unless someone asked for it. But we’ve put a lot of effort into training ourselves, going on ship visits, attending online courses and making a point of cruising for our own holidays. David went on a fam trip to the Antarctic with Quark Expeditions in November, which was fantastic.

Q. Who are your clients?
About 70% of bookings come from existing customers and of the 30% of new customers, most are referrals. We have a lot of customers who live locally and in the rest of Scotland, but we’ve got people in London and they’ve introduced us to their network of friends and family. So we have customers in different areas, which is good.

Q. How do you use social media?
We find LinkedIn is growing quite a lot. It’s been quite successful in attracting new customers and quality leads who might be busy professionals who can’t talk to you in the day, but just want to relay their thoughts at night over a quick WhatsApp message. Probably 60% of the business we do is through WhatsApp. LinkedIn is about showing credibility, Facebook is about showing experience, but Instagram doesn’t do much for us.

Q. Aside from Covid, what are the biggest challenges your business has faced?
We’re very lucky not to have been massively affected by huge problems. Because of David’s engineering background and experience dealing with high-pressure situations, he doesn’t stress when somebody misses a flight – he just gets it sorted. Any time we’ve had issues, our clients have always come off the phone feeling calm in the knowledge that we’re working on it and they’ll be fine. There will be a resolution that might not be perfect, but there will be a resolution. We never overpromise – we would rather over-deliver than overpromise.

Q. How do you want to develop your business over the next five years?
That’s a huge discussion point for us and we talk about it every day. We’ve looked at shops and offices, because ultimately we want to have a space for customers and to be able to host client nights. At the rate we’re growing, there will come a point when we evolve. We don’t want to employ anyone, but I think we’ll evolve what we sell – we’ll drop some of the short-haul and start selling much more long-haul. But that’s a long-term plan.