Silver Travel Advisor’s travel agency business hopes to take on a further 10 to 15 homeworkers by the end of this year.
The agency, a member of the Hays Travel independence Group, currently has five homeworkers but hopes to expand to as many as 20 by the end of 2023.
Head of retail Julie Crumpton, who joined in September last year, said: “We have a team of five homeworkers and they are all good, experienced people, but we are always on the look-out for new agents.
“We want quality over quantity. My target is to have 15 to 20 homeworkers by the end of this year.”
The information site currently provides leads from its 140,000 members to the agency’s homeworkers to follow up for bookings.
The agency is also giving training and support to its homeworkers to help them to generate more of their own sales.
In addition, the agency has begun taking away groups of clients on organised trips in conjunction with tour operators, some of which are accompanied by Silver Travel Advisor staff.
Crumpton said the agency remained focused on the mature market but was targeting growth, potentially from a broader client base.
“Our focus is on the over 50s mainly because they have got the time and money to travel and it’s where our experience is,” said Crumpton, adding: “The type of customers we have are not ‘fly and flop’, they want a cruise or an escorted tour, for example. We target that (over-50s) market but we can book anything. We want to grow organically and we want more referrals.”
The agency, which charges a monthly fee but has no joining fee, pays half of the agent’s commission in the month when a sale is confirmed and the remainder in the month of departure.