Luxury homeworking firm Travel Directors has recruited former Beds With Ease head of sales Nicola Harper as head of operations and strategy.
The newly-created role will complete the Aquilium Travel Group’s senior management team, recently boosted by the appointment of Nisha Bean as business development manager to work alongside existing business development manager Kym O’Brien.
Harper will be tasked with supporting the group’s homeworkers, growing the existing administration and operations teams and looking at future projects.
Chief executive Gary Pridmore said he was delighted to have secured someone with Harper’s standing in the trade.
He said: “She brings with her a wealth of experience and is well known in the trade. She will be the person who controls all the policies and support for the Travel Directors and all our systems.”
Harper worked at Beds With Ease for nearly two years until this July, when she was made redundant. Prior to that she was trade partnerships manager at Thomas Cook and national account manager at Attraction World. She worked as a travel agent for Tui early on in her career.
She said: “It’s a really exciting role. I have always worked on strategy and projects and can bring that experience into the homeworking business and support Travel Directors to encourage growth.”
The group currently has 30 Travel Directors and already has a further 20 signed up to join before the end of the year. It recently approached Kuoni after the company announced a consultation over redundancies.
Pridmore added: “We have had a lot of people join from Kuoni and other companies and in some cases two colleagues have joined up to work together. We are going from strength to strength.”