Virgin Holidays is creating a new layer of management with 20 area managers who will look after the company’s 82 concessions in Debenhams, House of Fraser and Tesco stores. Standalone v-rooms will continue to have their own store managers.

Lee Haslett, sales director of Virgin Holidays, said: “This announcement is absolutely about giving opportunity to our great teams in retail and ensuring that we continue to deliver the best customer experience in our v-rooms.

“We will have the same number of levels within our retail team as we have today and store managers have been invited to apply for a range of roles – either as a newly titled ‘personal travel expert’ that focuses on customer service, or as one of our twenty area managers to focus on learning and development.”

Haslett added that the restructure would create 24 new roles through the opening of new v-rooms stores and the addition of area managers to look after its concessions. The company employs around 700 staff across its retail operation.

Virgin is also to open two new standalone v-rooms high street shops in
Norwich and Cardiff. Both are due to open in November and will take the number of these “concept” stores up to 12 across the UK – each of which will have their own store manager.

The company said that creating a new “management pool” of 32 retail managers had been implemented “to move more of the existing staff to frontline sales roles for improved customer service” as well as to “empower” managers to take on a “greater managerial role”.