JG Travel Group has recruited National Holidays’ former groups supervisor Julie Wilson as it gears up to grow sales through the trade.
The National Holidays brand and database were acquired in July for an undisclosed sum by an affiliate of the JG Travel Group, which owns touring brands Just Go! Holidays and Omega Breaks.
The group is in the process of recruiting a number of former staff who worked for the Shearings and National Holidays coach brands prior to parent company Specialist Leisure Group going into administration.
Wilson, groups supervisor for National for more than six years, started this week as JG Travel’s groups manager across National Holidays, Just Go! Holidays and Omega Breaks.
It follows the recent appointment of Claire Dutton as trade sales manager across all three of JG Travel Group’s brands on August 5.
Sales and marketing director Danny Crowe said: “We are one of the few operators taking on staff at the moment. We have got more people coming from Shearings and from National Holidays.
“We have Claire on the agents’ side of the business but another close link with agents is our groups coach business.
“We also have product people coming and we are recruiting for more marketing, copywriting, commercial, reservations and transport staff over the next couple of months.”
The group has already extended many existing travel agency contracts to include National Holidays and has just created a closed Facebook group for agents covering its three brands, with product information and sales tips.
Product ranges from short coach breaks in the UK to day excursion flights to see the Northern Lights.
Dutton said: “It’s taken a bit of time [to get all the contracts in place] and some are still ongoing. I wanted to get the closed user group set up so we could get in front of agents quickly; it was key that we had a group agents could join to learn about our product range across all three brands.”
She is also planning online training for the trade as well as marketing point of sale materials for agents to use, and hopes to visit agents in person “as soon as we can”.
Crowe said agents were vital to future distribution. He added: “Agents generate huge amounts of coach business. With the acquisition of National Holdiays, it is an opportunity to just grow JG Travel Group’s offering and we feel agents are essential to that.”