Doctor to train travel agents as specialist life coaches
Doctor turned travel consultant Noreen Nguru is offering to train other luxury agents and operators as travel specialist life coaches to complement their businesses.
Dr Nguru set up What The Doctor Recommends, an agency specialising in wellness travel, in 2022 after she suffered burnout working in the NHS over the pandemic. Her novel approach earned her a nomination in the Luxury Travel Big Idea category of this year’s TTG Luxury Travel Awards.
She is also a qualified cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) coach and combines this with many of her travel consultations. She believes the sideline could benefit others in the trade.
“Someone who takes that course as a travel agent can actually add on the service as either a concierge service that they are offering to the client or potentially as another additional revenue stream – they’re a travel agent but they’re also a wellness travel coach,” she said.
Her six-week course will be a combination of pre-recorded content and group sessions.
Besides using their newfound skills in their existing work, Dr Nguru believes agents could also choose to speak at corporate events and coach business travellers.
The training could also help them feel more confident about charging consultation fees.
“It’s actually giving ownership to agents as well to value themselves and their time,” she explained.
“I think a lot of agents coach sometimes anyway, especially [those] creating very bespoke travel… they’re having conversations anyway about ‘why are you travelling?’ This is like the next level of being a travel agent, you’ve got that additional element to stand out.”
As an ambassador for the Travel Coach Network, Dr Nguru has recently started helping other burn-out medics to become wellness travel coaches as well.
Working with the College of Medicine and Integrated Health, she also wants to see GPs prescribing wellness travel to patients, calling it, “the next frontier of wellness tourism...” though she recognises it will be years before the NHS has the means to be onboard. For now, the corporate world and private heath are more likely partners.
Dr Nguru is already helping companies develop wellness breaks as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility obligations and believes this could develop as an alternative to some cash bonuses.
“What is an extra 5K or 10K bonus for me when I’m so overwhelmed with the workload and toxic hustle culture…?” she asked.
New retreats
What The Doctor Recommends is also restarting its own retreats. Dr Nguru first ran these in 2019 when she was booking travel on a small scale outside her medical work.
Featuring yoga, meditation and “high impact coaching” they will run this year in the UK, Sardinia, Cyprus and Costa Rica.
Originally female-only breaks, Dr Nguru has widened them to include men, who currently represent about 20% of her clients.
“I decided for the first year to try to make the retreats co-ed and see whether that encouraged more men to invest in their wellbeing and have these dedicated periods of time,” she explained.
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