Business development managers Vicky Whitehead and Martin Page will join the attraction ticket specialist on June 5.
Both are new to the travel trade, with Whitehead arriving from Bury Football Club, where she held the role of commercial executive, while Page has held a number of business development roles in retail.
“They’re fresh faces to travel, they’ve not been on the trade circuit before,” Annabel Cove, Do Something Different’s head of trade sales and marketing, told TTG.
“We received more than 100 CVs and carried out 44 interviews for these roles – it was quite a process, and we’re very excited about them. They will bring a new perspective and some fresh ideas. We’re a bigger and stronger team.
“We were looking for personality and creativity – people with a lust for life who live up to our brand name and can make the most of opportunities to get the trade’s attention.”
Whitehead will look after the northwest of England and north Wales, and Page northeast England and Scotland.
Together, they bring Do Something Different’s team of business development managers up to four and the brand’s entire team to 17, up from 12 a year ago following the creation of a new customer service team.
The new appointments come after a strong start to the year for Do Something Different – particularly for its Florida and Deep South products – necessitating a strengthened trade team.
When Cove joined Do Something Different in 2011, she said the business was working with just a handful of agents through a website “about as high tech as an old BBC computer”.
“It looked like something from CBeebies,” she said.
Now it has more than 3,500 agent partners and launched a new, responsive website, complete with agent portal, in late-2016.
“We only work with independent agents,” Cove explained. “We create dedicated support plans for them – it’s all heavily tailored.
“We’ve also created some new downloadable resources, available from our trade website. It’s the strongest foundation we’ve ever had to keep delivering expert sales training and support.”
Do Something Different has also redoubled its focus on rewarding agent partners, offering them and their families discounts of up 20%; giving away more than £8,000 worth of Love2Shop vouchers and five Walt Disney World holidays in the past year; and hosting a fam trip to SeaWorld.
“2017 was a tumultuous year; people are letting their hair down now,” said Cove. “We had to make sure we were still making it as easy and fun as possible to sell tickets.”
