Homeworking agency InteleTravel says its UK sales soared by 71% in 2021 to more than £28 million, despite the pandemic.
President James Ferrara announced the sales figures on Friday at the agency’s two-day conference in Valencia, Spain, with about 170 agents in attendance.
The agency boss is also expected to announce news about its Atol on Saturday when the conference looks at the future of the group, which has 10,500 agents in the UK.
Ferrara will be interviewed by PR manager and conference moderator Jeremy Skidmore on the future of Inteletravel with an update expected on the long-awaited Atol application.
After his update, Tricia Handley-Hughes, UK director, and Joanna Kolatsis, InteleTravel’s industry consultant and director of Themis Advisory, will present a session called How Atol can supercharge your business.
With an Atol, the agents will be able to put together their own protected package holidays.
Ferrara also told delegates on Friday that the agency now has 61 preferred partners, having signed up 14 over the past year.
Transactions rose 53% to 27,392 and the top 30 agents sold £1.1 million, up 47% year-on-year.
He said the company will have three people in its own UK-based call centre team from November so agents can speak to someone in their own time zone – currently they speak to call centre support staff based in the US.
“We learned a lot of lessons in the adversity, we took this last year to seize the opportunities,” he told the conference.
“We were being questioned; we are now being supported. The industry is understanding who we are.
“The recipe works, it has been proven again and again.
“We are in the best possible position for the travel renaissance.”
He told delegates there were regular training webinars and mentoring sessions during 2021 to keep agents up to date with the changing trends, and there were 36 ‘gin o’clock’ Facebook live sessions with Handley-Hughes.
The webinars focused on destinations, weddings and honeymoons, and staycations.
“Education is the backbone of the InteleTravel system,” he told delegates.