Your Stories: A chance encounter on a Virgin Voyages cruise secured a live-changing operation

Cruise specialist Col Ord also tells Andrew McQuarrie about setting up his homeworking agency

Q. How did you get started as an agent?
I would always have friends and family coming to me for advice and I became quite used to booking their holidays for them. I’d met travel agents who worked with InteleTravel and thought, ‘I can do a nice little side hustle here. I’m not expecting to do anything crazy but it will be fun.’ That’s where things started. I set up Travel Less Ordinary in August 2022.

Q. How’s the business going now?
The two brands I sell are Virgin Voyages and Celebrity Cruises, with the former my biggest by far. For wave season this year, I was one of the top five sellers for them in the UK and won the chance to have tea with Sir Richard Branson on Resilient Lady. On average, my business is getting between seven and eight enquiries a week and 60%-70% of those are converted into sales. A lot of the clients are new to cruise. The business has taken off in a way I didn’t expect it to. It’s evolved through word of mouth and the high levels of service I deliver. Probably around 30%-40% of my sales are repeat customers.

Q. What’s the biggest booking you’ve made?
I booked 33 cabins with an average cabin value of £6,000 for a 2026 Panama Canal cruise with Virgin Voyages, which came to a total value of £198,000. Two of the clients wanted suites and I managed to get them even though there was such high demand – they sold out within 20 minutes.

Q. What are your ambitions for the business?
Continued growth and continuing to diversify what I can offer – it’s about showing my client base that I’m not just a one-trick pony in the cruising market. I’m never going to be the type of agent you come to for a weekend in Benidorm or 10 days in the Algarve. But the more
long-haul and bespoke experiences are something I’m good at. I need to make some key decisions on how big the business can grow while still being able to maintain the same high level of service.

Q. Can you tell us about your mobility challenges?
I’ve suffered with obesity since I was seven. In 2022, I was 35 or 36 and walking with crutches, unable to take more than two or three steps at a time. It was a pretty horrific period of my life. In December 2021 I’d been on holiday to LA, but it wasn’t at all enjoyable because the flights were particularly uncomfortable due to my size. The decision was made for me that I needed to make some changes in my life.

Q. What did you do to help the situation?
I needed some time alone to think about how to solve this problem. I’m a Virgin Atlantic gold card holder and there was a killer offer in the market to get people on the ships. I had never been on a cruise at the time, but I thought I would do a week in Barcelona, sit on my balcony and consider what to do.

Q. How did that work out for you?
To be honest, it couldn’t have gone better, but not in the way I’d imagined. On day six, I was sitting in the pool at the mid-ship chatting to an Irish guy of a similar age to me. He asked why I wasn’t going to the David Guetta gig in Ibiza and I said it was because of the crutches and my size. He told me he was a bariatric surgeon, so we exchanged numbers and met for a coffee the next day.

He said, ‘For the size you are, you’re going to struggle to find someone who will operate on you, even privately.’ He said the best option was going down the NHS route and asked where I lived. I said Peterborough, and he looked at me in disbelief. When I asked why, he said Peterborough didn’t do bariatric surgery so they outsourced it to Homerton in north London.

And he said the really weird thing was that he was actually the lead consultant for bariatrics at Homerton. I was flabbergasted. After the cruise I went to the GP, where I experienced a little bit of resistance, but the surgeon from the cruise helped me by emailing the GP and explaining the situation. He ended up doing the operation for me.

Can you tell us about your other career?

I’ve worked in the railway industry for 17 years and done all kinds of jobs. One that I’m particularly proud of was being manager at King’s Cross. A Harry Potter movie was filmed at the station while I was there. They actually took over two of the platforms and part of the station became a film set for two days. I also met the Queen as part of my duties at King’s Cross. One of the other stations I worked at hosted Tom Cruise to shoot a Mission Impossible film.

We closed the station and he came down and did some stunts. He was really nice, very personable. The whole experience was a lot of fun and remains one of the highlights of my career. When we eventually saw the film, it was only a 15-second sequence but it was such a big set-piece for us – we’d spent weeks and months working on it. I’ve done a lot of huge and exciting things in the railway industry. As I’ve grown up I still consider it to be a great industry, but it’s not as much of a passion for me anymore.