Your Stories: Winning an Agent Achievement Award and Whoopi Goldberg‑inspired team calls

Q. How did you get into travel?
It is a bit of a funny story, because I didn’t want to go for the job interview that turned out to be my pathway into travel. I was 18 and had trained as a legal secretary, and thought that was what I wanted to do. My mum said I should have a job while looking for what I needed, so I got frogmarched to this interview at Riviera Travel for temporary Christmas work and I absolutely loved it. I got offered a permanent job at the end of the contract and stayed for 13 years. I grew up in the company, celebrating my 18th, 21st and 30th birthdays there.

Q. How was the move to Cruise Nation?
It has been a very easy transition and working from home is fantastic for me. I took on the role of manager two weeks after starting, because my manager had handed in her notice. The move came about after I decided to take a step back from Riviera Travel in the pandemic so I could have my daughter and spend time with her.

I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease before returning to work, and working in a shared office became a mental hurdle for me, so the homeworking job was the perfect opportunity at that time. The condition can sometimes be quite debilitating, but being able to work from home and do what I love without any issues takes away all my anxiety. If anything, it makes me more aware of how you get better results from people when you can put them in the right environment.

Q. How would you describe your approach to managing your team?
In my interview for the Agent Achievement Awards, I referred to myself as Whoopi Goldberg in how I manage my team. The analogy I was going for is how I grab their attention by doing something different. When I joined the team, everyone was quite independent and did not necessarily respond to managers because they had not had someone stick with them for a while. I walked into this virtual classroom of people, and I had to work to get them on side.

They were all doing a fantastic job and were incredible sellers, but customers were not necessarily getting the same experience across the board. So I would sing to them occasionally to get their attention in a meeting, and it felt like the scene in Sister Act 2 where Whoopi’s character walks into the classroom and screeches across the chalkboard.

Q. How has your team progressed since you joined?
There were only four people in the sales team when I started and now there are 15, so it has been a lot of work to train everyone up and build those relationships. I put in an hour of my day just to have a general chitchat with people, which is so important when people are working from home or new to the company. Now we’ve got to the point where everybody is singing to the same tune and behind the same vision and we are getting the results we want.

Q. What is trending right now?
We launched our touring hub last year, which combines cruising and escorted tours, and it’s a great offering. Cruise is still the main event, but we have more people wanting to do off-the-beaten-path holidays on land, but with the security of going through us.

Q. What is coming up for your team in the wave period and the rest of 2026?
December always makes me laugh because it’s the quietest time in travel, but it’s the busiest time for me. We had cruise lines booked in pretty much every day for training ahead of wave. We also launched an exciting campaign in December for the family market.

For 2026, we are going to focus heavily on luxury and experiences. Personally, I am looking at developing AI tools to help my team’s workload so they can work on more leads. The tools could help with transcribing and scoring our calls.

Tell us about winning Leisure Manager of the Year at the Agent Achievement Awards

I was shocked! Even to the point that I was so sure someone else had won it that I offered to film him getting up to accept the award. I had my phone out and everything. I had only been working at Cruise Nation for a year and we had made some massive improvements, putting great processes in place for better staff training and communication with our suppliers. But despite all of that, I had never considered myself a serious person in terms of personality.

I am the one who is always singing to myself or talking about K-pop or something. I don’t take myself too seriously and I always think when I see the people that win these awards, they look grown up and super professional. I didn’t know how to process it when I realised it was me. I could barely speak. All I wanted to do after going up on stage was to share it with my team and FaceTime my mum to thank her for forcing me to go to that interview when I was 18.

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