Witt brands Not Just Travel investments ‘a shot of adrenaline’

Agents will spend a week on the new vessel, sailing from Copenhagen on 13 September. The seminar is part of NJT’s Cruise Mastery programme, one of a series of new training modules.

NJT co-founder Steve Witt said the event would include 15 guest presenters and social media training.

“We’ve no shortage of presenters wanting to speak, we’ve paid for this, so we can do it the way we want – although we can’t always guarantee a brand-new ship,” he said.

NJT is bolstering cruise sales with a new team dedicated to it. Three new staff members have joined, with the aim to have “about 10”. “Some have moved internally, but there’s some new hires as well,” Witt said, adding: “We’re launching a brand-new cruise website to support that.”

The homeworking brand has also increased the number of business development managers (BDMs). “We’ve tripled our investment in BDMs, we’ve now one for probably every 30 agents. We already reckoned we had the best ratio in the business, now it’s even better.”

NJT now boasts “well over” 1,000 agents. Witt said he would carry on recruiting staff and agents with a £1.4 million fund, following an initial £1 million spend. “We’re probably the number-one recruiter of new-to-travel people; there’s no upper limit of what we can recruit,” he said.

He hailed the birth of “New NJT” as it prepares to launch an app at the end of this month. “We’re not trying to move towards being a tech company, but it is a cool way customers can interconnect with consultants and book; it’s a big investment.”

He said New NJT was giving the brand “a new shot of adrenaline” following Covid. “Everything is new, we started from the ground up.” New training programmes meant members could become “world class, whether entrepreneurs or cruise experts”.

Witt said the market was “incredibly strong” despite cost of living worries. “Despite the doom and gloom everyone is booking holidays – and on the back of that, there’s no shortage of people wanting to start their own travel business. We’ve seen as many people over the last 90 days as we have at any point in our history.”