Orchid Travel is to be turned into a homeworking operation after news that its call centre is to shut as a result of the merger of parent company Thomas Cook with MyTravel.
About 100 Orchid Travel call centre workers based in Birmingham have been offered homeworking roles or the opportunity to relocate.
Orchid’s homeworking bus-iness will initially operate as a trial and staff will be kept on their existing salaries and work the same hours.
If successful, Orchid is likely to become part of Thomas Cook Group’s existing homeworking operation of fewer than 100 staff, inherited from the merger with MyTravel.
Thomas Cook head of text operations Steve Fenton said: “Most Orchid staff are choosing to become homeworkers. Thomas Cook will help them to set up from home and is meeting all costs.”
He added: “We are keen to retain the staff – all they are doing is moving from a seat in a call centre to a seat at home.”
Instead of calls being fed into the call centre they will be directed into employees’ homes. About half of the company’s calls are generated from Teletext pages and the rest come from online enquiries.
A spokeswoman for Thomas Cook Group said it planned to increase its homeworking operation and was advertising for more agents to join, particularly to sell cruises.
“We are expanding homeworking from a cruise point of view,” she said.
Fenton added there were plans to expand Orchid Travel considerably.
The business already has a 30% repeat customer rate and has developed a niche in the four and five-star late booking market in the western Mediterranean.