More than £1m invested in Not Just Travel this year

Not Just Travel (NJT) bosses have invested more than £1 million into the homeworking firm so far this year as they look to take it to the “next level”.

In the last six months, NJT has more than doubled its head office team, recruiting at least 25 staff including partnership manager Natalie Singleton and head of trade Natalie Holder.

Speaking after the company’s three-day conference at the De Vere Cotswold Water Park at the weekend, co-founder Paul Harrison outlined the vision for NJT, which he aims to double in size by 2023.

More than 250 homeworking delegates at the conference heard how the ‘new’ Not Just Travel would launch on September 1 with a raft of upgrades including new training programmes and an app unveiling deals for agent, both set to launch later this year.

Harrison said: “The new NJT will offer the highest level of ongoing support, training and commission of any UK travel franchise.

“Covid has allowed us to think about the future and we’re now coming out with our exciting vision. We’re creating new systems, new people, new training, new resources and new opportunities.”

He added: “We’re not spending money for the sake of it. New staff are being brought in to create new tools and provide training and mentoring to sales consultants.

“The whole theme of the conference was our investment in you [the firm’s agents]. We’re creating real momentum now.”

NJT will have a two-tiered training programme where new sales consultants will join the NJT Training Academy before graduating to the ‘mastery programme’.

The company also plans to unveil a cruise-focused mastery programme that will fall within the main mastery programme.

On the mastery training programme, co-founder Steve Witt said: “It’s a higher calibre of training for successful travel consultants.”

He added that some sales consultants were earning around £30,000 a month in commission payments.

“We want all people to achieve these levels of commission if that’s what they want,” he said. “But money is not everyone’s motivator.”

Harrison said the mastery programme offered consultants “longer, more targeted” training. “It will be conducted in smaller groups,” he added.

There is no capacity limit for either stage of training, explained Witt, who revealed a programme of International Mastery Retreat events would also be held each year.

Agents who join the retreats can learn entrepreneurial skills, he added. “This is about being an entrepreneur,” he said. “99% of people who join us have never worked in travel and never worked for themselves as well.

“They will learn how to think outside the box. You cannot teach them this at the beginning because they need to learn about travel.”

The first International Mastery Retreat event location will be announced in September and will take place in March 2023, Witt added.

Asked whether the company was on target to double in size by 2023, Witt replied: “Absolutely. It might be sooner than that.”

Pictured (from left): Not Just Travel co-founders Paul Harrison and Steve Witt