Former Training For Travel managing director Joanne Roche is targeting travel firms again with her new employer.
Roche left the specialist travel training provider in 2010 after 13 years before the company later went out of business.
Having set up online cosmetics retailer The Best Beauty Store, she returned to training in March 2015 when she joined the Northern Training Academy.
The academy is an officially approved provider of training for firms with annual wage bills of more than £3 million that must now pay the Apprenticeship Levy.
Although it has a number of major clients in general retail, until now it has not sought to target travel.
However, Roche said travel remains her passion and she is looking to use her experience and those of the trainers in the academy, including former Training or Travel colleagues, to help firms adapt to the new levy-funded regime.
Roche said, as well as needing training needs, many large firms have looked for advice and expertise from training specialists like the Northern Training Academy as they devise their approach to apprenticeships.
“They set out thinking they want to be training providers but when it comes to delivery they do not realise there was so much work involved particularly with the whole audit and Ofsted inspection side of things.
“What the introduction of the levy has done has put training in the forefront of people’s minds and now some are beginning to panic because they have been paying for nearly a year so as a minimum have £150,000 in the pot.”
The new Apprenticeship Levy has been criticised after an initial nationwide fall in the number of new starters of up to 60% which has led to calls for it to be re-thought.
However, Roche said she supports it and would like to see it work.
“I think the concept behind the levy is very strong. Investing in people is a really good way of making the levy work,” she said.
“What happened is it was rushed through very quickly and there was not a lot of information available in the early days.
“A lot of companies possibly under-estimated how much time and resource you are going to have to put in in order to satisfy Skills Funding Council rules.”
Roche said she was delighted to have been able to revive the successful Training For Travel formula with a team of sector experts.
Of the 10 training professionals employed by the academy, six have a travel background.
Roche said: “We have been working with large retailers but my aim is to get back in to travel fully because there is not really anyone out there specialising in travel apart from the levy payer who are doing it for themselves.
“Because travel is such a specialist industry you have to have a travel background, and a lot of the big training companies don’t have that as a focus.
“The travel industry has always been my love and my passion, so I’m excited to get back in properly to push it forward. It feels like just as exciting an opportunity as it did 20 years ago when we set up Training For Travel.”
More: Opinion: Apprenticeships can help overcome skills shortages