Greg Uglow had never worked as a travel agent before. Yet six months after starting at Beverley Travel, he landed a £61,000 Africa booking all on his own, which prompted owner Karl Douglas to joke with him: “Where have you been hiding that one?”
So what support was in place to enable Greg to deliver one of the agency’s biggest-ever bookings so early in his employment?
Greg is a traveller – he set out in 2019 on what was meant to be a six-month round-the-world trip, which he kept extending. He met his partner while travelling, and when they were finally ready to come home, his home town of Beverley felt like the right place to put down some roots.
“I was working as a postie when I saw the job at Beverley Travel come up on Facebook,” he says. "It felt like a natural thing to fall into because I have so much knowledge about South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand.”
Although Greg describes himself as a people-pleaser rather than a natural sales person, he did have some experience in sales, including a stint with Hello Fresh. "That’s probably the scariest one, knocking on people’s front doors in their own home."
Beverley Travel was founded by Karl Douglas and Kelly Cheesman in 2017. Battling with the lack of experienced travel agents seeking new opportunities, they’ve had to look outside the industry for fresh talent as they expand their agency business. “We’re pretty innovative with our recruitment process and we’re investing a lot in recruitment and training,” explains Karl.
Both Karl and Kelly were new to travel when they launched Beverley Travel, so they’ve been in that position themselves, and what they realised was that rather than having encyclopaedic knowledge of destinations and products, it was more important to really understand the customer.
“It’s not about impressing the client with the name of a bar in Mongolia,” Karl says. “It’s about understanding the customer and their needs and then understanding your supplier base so you can go to the right supplier for them.”
Given that Beverley Travel is particularly strong on long-haul, tailor-made travel, they find this matching game between clients and suppliers works well.
“We’re independent and we will do whatever it takes to get things right for the customer. If that means we set up with a new supplier, we will do that,” says Karl. “I actually find it a lot harder to do a Mediterranean beach enquiry, where there’s so much choice and the hotels are very similar.”
12-week training plan
After impressing at a recruitment day, Greg was hired and given Beverley Travel’s bespoke 12-week training plan. This is designed to support an agent who is completely new to travel and turn them into a confident, capable travel consultant.
Through a combination of structured online training and shadowing his colleagues, Greg found he was naturally ticking off the required boxes. “It wasn’t like, if you haven’t achieved this by this date, we’ll discipline you," he says.
"It was just really helpful to have the guidance – and the check-ins – to know week by week this is what I should be able to do. And because I wasn’t left to my own devices, it felt smooth and easy.”
The clients responsible for the £61,000 booking were known to Beverley Travel, but their enquiry started as a casual one. “We wanted to pop by the store because we’ve been thinking about gorilla trekking and we want to know which is better, Rwanda or Uganda,” was their introduction to Greg, who happened to be free when they walked in.
When the husband mentioned the words, “we want it to be experience-driven”, Greg invited them to sit down and expand on the experiences they envisaged. It turned out the husband not only wanted to see gorillas, he also had chimps and Africa’s big five in mind, while the wife introduced a more cultural element to the enquiry.
Greg explains: “We talked and it was a natural flowing conversation. I waited for them to finish sentences, they waited for me to write notes about what they were saying.
“I got them talking about their previous holidays, what they liked and disliked,” he adds. “They talked about visiting South America and the wife said how much she enjoyed seeing the local towns and understanding the locals’ way of life.”
With the couple both nodding their heads to agree with each other’s ideas, Greg felt the wildlife and cultural itinerary coming together in his head. Before they left, he ran through a few proposed itineraries on Audley Travel’s website, his top choice of supplier for the enquiry.
“I wanted to give them time to understand the supplier we could potentially be using, and then as soon as they left, I called up Audley to relay what the clients wanted.”
After three hours of talking, Greg and Toby Buckridge, Africa specialist at Audley, developed an itinerary that packed everything in. “We wanted the customer to see the largest price with everything we could offer and we’d come down from there,” Greg says.
First time right
However, when the customers came back to the store to go through the itinerary, their reaction was very positive and they didn’t make any changes to the journey days or the hotels, they only added a couple of extras like a hot air balloon ride and another safari.
The itinerary covered Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. Although it was inspired by Toby’s own travels, it was a merging of his various experiences into one dream trip, which offered gorilla and chimp trekking, Big Five safaris, village excursions and other cultural experiences such as local cookery class.
The couple have paid their deposit and are looking forward to travelling in 2027. In a sign of the times, the husband confessed to Greg he had put his proposal through an AI system, which had confirmed it was a great itinerary.
“I think he was really checking the price, and when he added everything in, private transfers and all, our price was bang on what AI was suggesting, so that gave him confidence we were looking out for him and his best interests,” says Greg.
Karl sees Greg’s booking as validation that Beverley Travel’s training is working. “Obviously, the value makes this one stand out but in the past few weeks, we’ve had our apprentice book a £20,000 holiday in Eastern Canada. I sat with her during the enquiry, but she followed the process perfectly and booked the clients by herself.
“What we try to do is give the team the tools to handle these situations, rather than saying, you don’t know anything about Canada, so pass the enquiry along. Having other members of the team alongside you, there is always that safety net there.”
Initially, Greg was quite matter-of-fact about the booking, it was only later that his colleagues helped him realise how big and important it was, and he felt quietly proud of what he’d achieved.
“It gave me confidence to know that a complex, high-value itinerary can feel smooth, if you listen to the customer carefully," he adds. "When you take the time to understand them, then everything else falls into place."
