Overseas resort teams have the closest connection to our customers as they are there alongside them on their holidays. They also know the destination and the hotels in our programme inside out.

This experience provides invaluable insight to our head office teams too. It’s part of the reason we take such care in nurturing and developing our overseas colleagues and offering opportunities for those who wish to progress their career in a role back in the UK.

Ahead of making the jump, we encourage these colleagues to have career-planning conversations with their line manager to identify how the company can support their professional ambitions and work out the best route.

Like many companies, we advertise roles internally first, and our internal careers site is accessible to our overseas teams, who can apply from afar for a job here. Often we find that colleagues want to return to the UK on an initial secondment during the winter season.

Each year, around 40 overseas colleagues join our retail team in shops across the country. We find they are able to truly bring a holiday to life for customers while supporting our retail colleagues during busy booking periods.

Other members of our overseas team choose to take a different path and take on a new challenge in our holiday change, recruitment or product teams.

Career path

You only have to look around the Tui UK and Ireland head office to see that it is full of talented individuals who started out in their working life with us in an overseas role.

Take Emma Thompson as a case in point. Emma first joined Tui in 2003 as a holiday rep in the Greek Islands. She quickly progressed and became a guest services manager, before becoming a resort team leader and then resort manager.

One of Emma’s highlights from her time overseas was as the resort manager when we opened our first ever Sensatori hotel in Crete.

When Emma made the decision to return to the UK, she took on a role within our head office, working in customer strategy. She then gained experience in our after travel and health and safety teams.

Now an HR advisor in my team and studying for a related professional qualification, Emma is able to use her knowledge to support our contact centres, cruise, retail, commercial, and marketing and digital divisions from an HR perspective.

Meet all of this year’s Tomorrow’s Travel Leaders here.