Mother-of-four Helen Dooley has come up with the perfect solution for juggling home and work life. The former TTA Worldchoice commercial director has opened a travel agency with a separate lounge area where her children can relax and do their homework after school.
Based in a listed building in Stamford, Lincolnshire, More Than Travel has an agency front office and lounge area, a private room for travel consultations and a private family room with a TV and computer for the children to use.
Dooley, who runs the business with her husband and one part-time sales consultant, says: “The children have a TV and access to the internet and one of us is always here.”
The idea for More Than Travel came to her after she had her fourth child last year and suffered a potentially life-threatening blood clot.
She decided to swap the corporate environment for her own family travel business after 12 years with the consortium.
Balancing her work life with her children – Freya, 13, Charlie, 10, Archie, seven, and Georgia, 11 months – was tough but while she was on sick leave for six months her perspective on working life changed.
“After each baby I thought about whether I wanted to go back to the corporate environment but after I got ill I realised I wanted a change of pace. It was a
bit of a ‘life’s too short’ moment,” she says.
The business has already become a family affair. “The children know not to hover in the office if we have a customer but they are pretty good at making the tea and putting stickers on brochures,” she adds.
Working as a husband and wife team also makes it more manageable if there are emergencies to deal with, or if one of them needs to do the school run, she says. “If one of the children is ill and one of us needs to stay at home it’s easier because it’s our business.”
However, Dooley is the first to admit she is not always as organised as she would like to be. “On the day we opened we forgot to get anyone to collect the boys from school. I was on the phone to the school telling them to hang on to them and that someone was on their way!”
What the future holds
More Than Travel aims to focus on specific tour operators in the luxury market and will operate a small call centre for local businesses.
The agency, which opened this month and is part of the TTA Worldchoice consortium, is currently specialising in upmarket holidays.
But partner Helen Dooley hopes to specialise further, once the agency is established, by focusing on specific tour operators in the luxury sector.
“There are some operators that I really want to sell, although I might be forced to sell some others to start off with. I would like to offer operators that offer a good service and a fair deal,” she says.
Dooley is also working with a local publishing firm to put together readers offers, such as tailor-made driving holidays around Italy, at the end of the summer. A minimum of three staff will be employed to take calls.