Travel agent celebrates record £146k booking with easyJet holidays

Designer Travel agent Joanne Woodhall has shared her delight after securing a £146,000 booking with easyJet holidays – the tour operator’s biggest to date.

Woodhall, based in Leicestershire, arranged a four-night trip to Rhodes for 150 employees attending an annual work conference.

“It’s my biggest-value booking,” she said, adding she was “elated” to learn it was also the highest-value for easyJet holidays since the company was founded in November 2019. 

Woodhall’s client had previously booked his personal trips through her, before last year asking if she could help with an overseas work event. 

Last year’s trip to mainland Spain was for 80 employees, but Woodhall faced a greater challenge this year.

“It was a lot harder to sort for 150 because of the need to get hotel rooms for that many people and also the need to get conference rooms that can hold that many,” she said.

Woodhall booked 50 single rooms at the Lindos Royal Resort and 50 twin rooms at the Lindos Village Resort & Spa – the only way to accommodate the whole group in the same area.

She will join the lead client on a recce visit next month and will fly out two days before the October conference to ensure the facilities are in order.

Woodhall said the most difficult aspect of handling such a large group booking was collecting passengers’ details before the outbound flight.

“The administration is a lot of work,” she said, adding she would invite each traveller to send her individual messages on WhatsApp.

She learned the booking was a record-breaker after Darren Bien, Designer Travel’s head of sales and commercial, contacted easyJet holidays to check.

Natasha Marson, head of trade distribution at easyJet holidays, said: “It’s through the fantastic collaborative effort of our trade, purchasing and customer teams that we were able to get this booking over the line.

This is the biggest booking ever made at easyJet holidays and we’re thrilled it was by one of our brilliant trade partners.”

Woodhall, who joined Designer Travel in September 2019, started out in travel before retraining as a midwife – a career she pursued for more than 20 years – until returning to her “passion”.