My Travel Career: Shearings Holidays’ Jane Atkins

My first foray into making money was working at a caravan park in west Wales. Living in the West Midlands aged 16, there weren’t many summer jobs so I stayed with friends in Lydstep Haven and worked there. Then I worked a season on a campsite in the south of France. I had to hose down showers at 5am.

Working for Pickfords Travel in Harrogate gave me great insight into the workings of a travel agency. It was a busy high street agency and I had a very experienced manager who believed that you had to do everything. So I did it all – from stamping brochures to interacting with customers. I still have my name badge and can remember my Abta number. Having been at the sharp end, I have a lot of empathy for what agents do. I understand their aims and ambitions and what they need to make their agency successful. It still stands me in good stead.

That slip from job to career came while I was at Rainbow Holidays. When I joined as regional sales executive for the north-east, the managing director Steve Price was only 10 years older than me. He was energetic, entrepreneurial and I thought: “I can do that.” He was happy to encourage that and while he pushed you hard, he always listened to your ideas.

I went from being a medium-sized fish in a puddle to a minnow in a lake. I ended up as sales director at Rainbow Holidays, but it was a small privately owned short-breaks specialist. I wanted to get a broader perspective on the industry, so I went to Airtours Holidays as general sales manager in the late 1990s, which was a big move for me. It was going through many iterations at the time and my goal was to learn within a vertically integrated, end-to-end travel business, so it was a great opportunity.

The travel industry sort of grabs you. I was at Airtours, which became MyTravel, for 11 years, then when Thomas Cook and MyTravel merged and moved to Peterborough, the opportunity arose to join Co-operative Travel Group as managing director of the Freedom Travel Group and Future Travel, the homeworking division at the time. It was sort of a forced move, but I ended up running a business all about independent travel agents, so it almost took me right back to the beginning of my career. I was working with really energetic business owners, offering them a consortia solution, and with homeworkers, which is entirely different. It was a really varied role and I loved doing it.

Working for Super Break is a really fond time in my career. During the five and a half years I was there, it went from primarily a UK short breaks operation to a fully fledged short-breaks operator. The sales team there has a great reputation and I worked with some fabulous people.

Now I’m the new girl. I’ve been with Shearings for three months, having come in as managing director. It’s a time when the over-55s market is growing – it’s a huge part of the demographic and where a lot of the wealth sits. I think the journey we take Shearings on in the forthcoming months and years presents me with a really exciting opportunity.

I recharge my batteries by walking and cycling. I work in Wigan and live in the Lake District, so I spend my weekends out in the hills. It’s important to look after yourself so you can deliver to your objectives or you burn out. It’s about setting an example to your team as well.

I didn’t appreciate all the big career opportunities in travel when I started out. Now, when I’m talking to young people I try to showcase travel as a career option – whether you want to be a marketer, an accountant, a salesperson or heading up a call centre. Travel can be seen as a bit frivolous and I think we all have a responsibility to get talent into the industry. It’s why I think TTG’s 30 Under 30 is a great idea.

Be flexible, grab every opportunity and accept change with enthusiasm. That would be my advice for millennials. The travel industry has changed immeasurably over the past 10 years and I’m sure it will evolve even more in the next 10. You have to accept it may not always be a straight path and you should always be willing to do more than your job description.