The Travel Franchise has appointed an industry outsider in the newly-created role of head of marketing.
The group currently has more than 650 travel consultants and hopes Sara Rigby will help grow this number to at least 1,000 homeworkers by 2020.
She has moved from Australia specifically for the job and joins after more than 15 years’ experience in marketing, telecommunications and finance including head of marketing roles in London and Sydney.
Her appointment is part of the company’s strategy to bring in experts from various fields to ‘disrupt the travel sector’ and ‘create a model never seen before in the market’.
The Dorset-based group has decided to create two teams for each strand of its business, one for The Travel Franchise, focussed on recruiting more homeworkers and franchisees, and one for its sister arm, Not Just Travel, focussing on increasing holidays sales.
"I think the difference is having someone now totally focused on The Travel Franchise," said Rigby.
"Previously the marketing team has been looking after both sides of the business, Not Just Travel (holiday sales) and The Travel Franchise (the recruitment arm). I’m really looking forward to implementing new campaigns and strategies in order to drive recruitment sales and achieve our goal of increasing the number of new franchisees we bring on each month by 25%."
The two sides together reported a strong start to 2019 with sales in January up 82% on the same month in 2018.
