The Freedom Travel Group has had its best year yet for recruitment, with 27 new members joining since this time last year. A number of these have been former staff from Thomas Cook or TUI Travel setting up their own businesses. New members include Newcastle-based online agency and call centre Monster Travel, which was set up by former Thomson Holidays head of direct sales David Hawke. Former Harvey World Travel general manager Andy Tomlinson has also set up his own venture, Sutton Travel in Sutton Coldfield, as a Freedom Travel Group member. Speaking to Travel Weekly at the consortium’s conference in Manchester yesterday, managing director of Freedom Travel Group Jane Atkins said: “Since the vertically integrated companies have been restructuring, there are lots of talented people in the marketplace, and they want a change from big corporate life.” The consortium also lost 22 members, due to them ceasing trading rather than moving to other consortia. “We lost 10% more members than we did last year. Some were due to the recession, but others were just people retiring,” said Atkins. The head office operations of Freedom Travel Group and homeworking division Future Travel will be more joined up to make the business more efficient, said Atkins. “Some things were duplicated so we are taking the best of both. There are lots of similarities between the two memberships to there are opportunities for them to share learning,” she said.
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