How the Travel Counsellors Welfare Fund is helping agents in the Covid-19 crisis

22 May 2020by Madeleine Barber

We speak to Travel Counsellors’ Kieran Hartwell about the homeworking giant’s welfare fund

Madeleine Barber

Head of partner content

Madeleine Barber

Head of partner content

With nearly a quarter of British employees currently on furlough and businesses temporarily closed across the UK and Ireland, it’s no secret that the coronavirus crisis is causing financial hardship for an unprecedented number of people. It’s more noticeable in the travel industry than most, with customers cancelling holidays and suppliers suspending operations, leaving travel agents in the middle to try and pick up the pieces.

Travel Counsellors is a homeworking giant in which the hardship could be felt more widely, with individual travel agents responsible for their own businesses, profits and pay. In response, head office decided to invest more into the Travel Counsellors Welfare Fund, a service dedicated to providing financial support to agents in need.

Kieran Hartwell, Travel Counsellors’ managing director for corporate travel, heads up the fund and says the service has always been an important resource for the company’s self-employed community: “The fund was buried in the company and has loaned, gifted and granted [money] for the past 25 years – it’s been foundational to helping [agents] grow their business.”

Kieran Hartwell

But given the additional stress Covid-19 has put on travel businesses in the UK, Hartwell decided the service needed a financial and marketing boost.

“We have a community of about 2,000 people around the world and it’s our duty of care to do what we can and take care of as many as we can, to retain talent for the long term too,” he says.

Making a difference

Since the crisis came into full effect, the Travel Counsellors Welfare Fund has helped more than 60 people and distributed more than £25,000. The financial support has helped Travel Counsellors pay their rent, buy food and keep up with bills, including emergency medical bills.

The Welfare Fund is part of a larger suite of support that Travel Counsellors offers its agents and is made up of contributions from the Travel Counsellors’ business, investors, directors and agents themselves. Application is open for any Travel Counsellor and the average turnaround time from application to distribution is just four days.

While applications remain confidential, Hartwell explains that there are two types of agent that “fall through the cracks” when it comes to government support: those who have not yet submitted a tax return and those who are set up as a limited business and pay themselves through dividends (government support is currently only offered to those on PAYE earnings).

“The welfare fund is in place to help everyone [at Travel Counsellors] – no one is left behind,” he says.

The fund is also not a service that will disappear post pandemic, adds Hartwell: “There is no finite amount of money or time as it’s something that’s always been in place and we’re always looking at different ways to help the community.”

“It will always be there to help people who are suffering from financial hardship, but it may extend to a bounce back loan facility [in future] – we’ll have to see what happens.”