Heading into the traditional January peak booking period, the Holidaysplease Travel Homeworking team were realistic and at the same time optimistic about the prospects for pandemic peaks!

Did we expect normal booking levels? Of course not. Could we see opportunity? Hell yes!

Were our hopes for pandemic peaks blind optimism, or were there solid reasons to be optimistic?

Well, all the conversations the Holidaysplease Homeworking Team had been having with their customers towards the back end of 2020 indicated that a good number were desperate and determined to have a holiday to look forward to in 2021 or 2022.

And, whilst demand would clearly be lower than usual, with High Street Travel Agents sadly closed due to lockdown and many call-centre sales staff furloughed, there was a great opportunity for homeworkers fully open for business to grab a good slice of the market that was there.

Plus, there are strong messages to convey around why customers should be booking their holidays in January rather than leaving it to see how the land may lie later.

With less airline capacity in the market, many destinations and hotels taking their time to re-open therefore reducing choice and bed-stock, and many customers having already shifted their 2020 holiday to 2021, prices are bound to rise as the market comes back, so booking now to secure the holiday of your choice at the best price was a key motivator for customers.

And the flexible booking terms that many good tour operators have in place mean that customers can book without risk.

So we were confident in our assessment that January pandemic peaks offered a good opportunity for Holidaysplease Homeworkers to be productive, make bookings and earn some much needed commission!

The theory sounded good, so how did the month go then?

Well it wasn’t long before the travel trade press were reporting a pretty bleak picture of a “dead market” and “trading running at 80% down.”

At the same time we were pleased to see that enquiry and booking numbers through the first week or so of January were pretty much in line with our predictions, and as we got further into the month, the numbers just kept on getting better!

By the end of the month the Holidaysplease Homeworking Team had hit 96% of the sales target they had set for the month, and as a business we achieved 77% of the total net commission figure from our record January from 2020. So 23% down in a market reported to be anything from 75-90% down. Not good to be down ever, but in the circumstances a result for the team to be proud of.

Here our some other key January pandemic peaks stats from the Holidaysplease Travel Homeworkers :-

• Top team member made over 100 bookings and £300k in sales.
• Homeworkers smashing the £100k mark and setting new personal record months!
• New homeworkers getting over £40k in sales and earning more in commission in the month than they would from an average travel sales job.
• Over 4,400 new enquiries generated in the month.
• Average sale of £5,937 up 19% on January 2020.

So, a normal January? Nope. A productive and rewarding one? Absolutely!

There is no getting away from the fact that trading conditions remain super-challenging and a mountain of uncertainty remains. However, with energy and belief the opportunities are there to be had as the Holidaysplease Homeworking Team ably demonstrated once again through January pandemic peaks!

You can find out more about Travel Homeworking with us at Holidaysplease by calling 0121 200 5750 or emailing gemma.mcleod@https://travelhomeworking.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/HFC-Website-social-images-66-1.png.com

Get in touch, we would love to chat!