Julia Kemp
Job title: sales manager retail and business travel.
Age: 33.
Born: Luton.
Lives: Bedfordshire.
Status: married.
Education: Ashecroft High School, Luton.Barnfield College of Higher Education, Luton.
Path to career: started at high-street travel agency during college years. Joined Netherlines Dutch Airline as sales executive in 1985, left as sales manager in 1988. In 1988 joined Sport for Television as sales and marketing manager. Joined Thistle Hotels in 1989 moving into itsInternational Partner Association Supranational hotels in 1991 as director of sales and marketing. In 1997 joined Alamo and in 1998 joined Avis as sales manager retail and business travel.
Industry talk
What was your first job in travel and how much did you get paid?
Working for a major high-street travel agency earning around £40 per week.
What, apart from your current position, would be your ideal job in travel?
Running a small hotel with a fantastic restaurant.
What has been your most embarrassing moment in the travel industry?
Asking the guest speaker at a travel industry evening if they were into sport…to find out it was Gavin Hastings!
What’s the best job you’ve had, apart from your current one?
With Supranational Hotels, an association of hotel chains. It gave me the opportunity to travel extensively and understand the global travel industry.
What advice would you give to someone starting out in the travel industry?
Embrace change and be flexible.
How do you deal with timewasters at work?
With no mercy.
What one thing would you change about your job?
The office location – in Hayes.
Which company, apart from you own, do you most admire and why?
The Carphone Warehouse – it is a forward thinking company which offers impartial advice.
Do you have a Web site and if so how many bookings do you receive on it?
Avis receives around 1,000 bookings per month from our Web site www.avis.com but we are developing a new European Web presence.
How many travel agents do you estimate there will be left in five years’ time?
Plenty, so long as they meet expectations.
Make one prediction about travel in the 21st century:
I think travel will still be the most exciting consumer purchase.
Personal talk
What is your star sign?
Leo.
What would you change about yourself?
I’d be less clumsy and a bit more tidy.
Which living person do you most respect?
Not one but two people, my parents – both professionally and personally, they just seem to get it right.
If you could be anyone for a day who would it be and why?
Definitely Kate Adie, she gets to travel to interesting places under exciting and challenging circumstances.
What is your greatest extravagance?
Lotions and potions, especially Dior.
What is your greatest vice?
Far too much black coffee.
Who, apart from your partner, would be your ideal holiday companion and where would you go?
My son, and we would go somewhere warm where we could swim, cycle and explore. Probably the Alps in summer.
What is the most memorable destination you’ve visited and why?
Mexico – I got stuck in an earthquake and a hurricane in the same trip.
What type of holiday would you avoid at all costs?
Sailing, unless it was on a huge sunseeker somewhere exotic.
What is your favourite TV programme/film/book?
TV would be wildlife programmes, my favourite film is Last of the Mohicans and the book probably Jane Eyre.
How do you relax?
A hot bubbly bath and a glass of wine.
What would you have put on your gravestone?
Still smiling