Corporate solicitor Jenny Willcock tells Andrew McQuarrie how she managed to set up a second career as a travel agent while on maternity leave
Q. When did you start Lets Go Travel?
A. One of my friends is with InteleTravel and I’d happened to see her Instagram account when I was on maternity leave. I got in touch with her and said, ‘how do you manage to travel all the time?’ She said she had signed up to InteleTravel, so I set up Lets Go Travel in January 2022 and started making bookings in March 2022.
Q. Can you tell us more about the travel-related business deals you’ve handled as a solicitor?
A. When I was quite a junior lawyer, I worked on the acquisition of Icelolly.com and On the Beach when both of those businesses were getting investment from a private equity fund. Historically, I’ve done work for Japan Airlines and we’ve also had clients in the ticketing arena. There are a few [travel-related] clients that we have ongoing work with, but I’m not allowed to disclose those.
When I was quite a junior lawyer, I worked on the acquisition of Icelolly.com and On the Beach when both of those businesses were getting investment from a private equity fund
Q. What type of holidays do you sell the most?
A. I quickly found the niche I enjoy – and it’s more lucrative – is travel to four-star or five-star hotels in destinations including Turkey, the Caribbean, Dubai, Mauritius and the USA. That’s not to say I haven’t got people asking me for city breaks, but I don’t book that many lower-end, budget-type holidays. The people I’m booking for are families, couples and friends. I’ve not had anybody asking for solo travel yet and I’ve not sold any cruises either but I’ve done the training.
Q. Has your legal career helped you?
A. As a lawyer my job is to be extremely organised and look at the most efficient way of doing something. I’ll read documents that are a minimum of 50 to 100 pages long and I have to distil a lot of information quickly to speak to my clients about certain issues or key points. Being organised and being able to do that helps with the travel business because I can scan-read very easily, understand clients’ wants and needs and upload that information to the InteleTravel database. Project management skills are also there from my transactional experience and as I’m used to working to extremely tight deadlines, booking a holiday is like boom, boom, boom.
I’ve achieved £175,000 of revenue since March last year and I wouldn’t mind reaching £250,000 by the end of the year
Q. How has business been?
A. It’s been great. It was never meant to be a business, but now I’m going to keep growing it. It’s fun and it’s like switching off from my day job. I’ve achieved £175,000 of revenue since March last year and I wouldn’t mind reaching £250,000 by the end of the year.
Q. What’s the most memorable booking you’ve made to date?
A. A honeymoon to Saint Lucia I booked for a very good friend. They stayed at a fantastic resort and I arranged all the frills, including a helicopter instead of a taxi when they landed and a butler. I also booked them a hotel at Heathrow the night before they flew out.
With InteleTravel, there are no contracts or commitments. It costs £150 and it’s worth the risk to see if it’s something you can make a lucrative business from
Q. What advice would you give to someone else considering a second career as a travel agent?
A. Do it. Challenge yourself. You don’t want any ‘what ifs’. With InteleTravel, there are no contracts or commitments. It costs £150 and it’s worth the risk to see if it’s something you can make a lucrative business from. The support network is there and it’s a nice community too.
Q. How much do you get to travel?
A. A lot. This year I took my little girl and mum to Dubai in February, and I was in Portugal for a week. I’m just about to go to another part of Ireland for a week, Ibiza at the end of August and Turkey in September. Last year I was in Madrid and visited Turkey twice – I was in Istanbul for a city break and I did a two-week tour around the coast, which I tied into my business because I met a lot of hotel suppliers that I liked the look of. We did a stay in each one and now I use them for bookings whenever clients want to go to Turkey. I was in California last year, too. I spend any time I’ve got away, subject to my annual leave from my work.
I was in Istanbul for a city break and I did a two-week tour around the coast, which I tied into my business because I met a lot of hotel suppliers that I liked the look of
How do you juggle being a corporate lawyer and a travel agent?
Quite fortunately, a number of the key suppliers I regularly use have apps, so I have them on my phone.
I tend to do a lot of quotes on the way to or from work, which is the lawyer in me – making the most efficient use of my time. Other than that, I’ll put the baby to bed at maybe 7pm or 7.30pm and then I’ll do an hour or an hour and a half after that before going to bed at about 11pm. I’m not working at this all day, every day.
At the beginning it takes a lot longer to get a quote, but now I can set up a quote and send that out to a client in 15-20 minutes. So it’s not a very time-consuming thing to do, particularly when you can do a lot of it on your phone. At the weekend I do focus on family, but my little one, now aged two-and-a-half, still naps so I do a lot when she’s sleeping. It was the same when I was on maternity leave. Every time she napped, I did travel work throughout the day, so I was probably doing more work on mat leave than I am now on a daily basis – but I was a lot slower then as well.