Michelle Halsey had an inkling she was on to something when she sold 12 seats on a dinner train trip – escorted by herself – with Belmond in just a week.
The Hays Travel personal travel consultant decided to commit to selling an allocation of seats for the trip in April after having successfully escorted seven customers on a similar trip from Exeter to Dartmouth last year.
That had followed a chance meeting with Belmond sales director Howard Barclay at a Hays Travel conference, who encouraged her to sell the train trip.
This year’s trip with Belmond – formerly Orient-Express – was a round-trip from Newton Abbot, Devon, and included a five-course meal.
Michelle says: “I had to commit to 12 seats, which was quite a risk because I am self-employed and the seats were £250 per head. But within a week I had sold 12 and eventually I sold 20. We were able to have a whole carriage to ourselves. It was a really social night. Everyone was met with champagne and had a five-course meal.”
She managed to kick-start sales by splitting payments into instalments so her clients had to pay only £35 a month once they had paid a deposit. They even clubbed together to travel to Newton Abbot in a minibus, she adds.
Michelle, who used to work in the Vacation World shop in Tiverton, works from home but also has a pop-up clinic in a small department store in the Devon town. She says the offer to use a “space under the stairs” in the store for free was too good to refuse.
“Most of my clients are retired and they prefer to see me; they like the interaction,” she says. “The travel clinic is not about attracting new customers but it allows my existing clients to sit down and go through their holiday bookings.”
The train trip success has inspired her to organise the trip again next year as well as plan a personally escorted coach tour, this time to see a show in London this autumn.
“Within half an hour of being on board the train, I had customers who said they had friends who would want to do it next year. The majority of my customers are older and they like the fact they will be taken care of; they love the personal service,” she says.
And personal service is clearly something Michelle, who took a £14,000 pay cut to start a career in travel as a trainee in 2002, is passionate about. She offers everything from checking in her clients online to giving out ticket wallets for travel documents.
“It’s keeping the romance of travel alive,” she adds.