Get Travel Leaders Talking with Designer Travel's Amanda Matthews

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How have you been looking after your mental health and physical wellbeing over the past few months?

The first thing that we did, both (co-founder) Karen and I, was remain positive and keep a positive mental attitude. We’ve always looked at the positives. We’ve always believed there is a way out and we’ve always had to show that things will come back positively. Everything we’ve done has always been driven in a positive way rather than a negative way. We’ve also encouraged ourselves and our team to take time out. You know, there’s no point in sitting at your desk, you don’t want to be the busiest person in the graveyard. So we’ve encouraged everyone to take some time out when they can.

We found it quite difficult going into 2021, because I think all of us went into the year thinking we had got rid of 2020, and it was a really big shock to the system. But we were in a lockdown for so long, not just on a business perspective, but on a personal perspective as well. So we really pulled together in February as a team and with our clients. And because we couldn’t travel, we decided that we were going to ‘walk around the world’ for charity. So we set a target to do 50 million steps between us. And over the four weeks we did it, it was amazing!

So things like that have kept us going. As leaders, you can be busy fools – you can only work 24/7 for so long before you burn out. So, unlike a lot of companies that were downsizing, we actually took the decision to recruit two senior managers in November because we needed help for when things come back because we still, to this day, believe we will flourish even more when we things get back to being a bit more normal.

What strategies have you been using to strengthen your personal resilience?

I’m one of those people that is always glass half-full, and I always think there’s somebody worse off than you. I’ve taken time out for myself, I go on walks, I’ve got two dogs and they keep me sane. I’ve struggled with homeschooling. Like many parents, I’m glad I didn’t ever become a teacher! For all of us who love the travel industry, it’s hard to enjoy our days, days and days of doing the same, not nice stuff – but equally there is always something that happens in each of our days that creates this sense of wellbeing.

It’s just important to make time for yourself, to look at yourself and to see the signs when you’re tired, and to give yourself a couple of days off to rest and recover. And to celebrate even the small things – celebrate the good stuff when it happens.

What’s been your most challenging moment of the crisis?

It’s very hard to pinpoint because there have been so many challenging situations. I mean, we had hundreds of people overseas that we had to get back, then we had to deal with tour operators, cruise lines and airlines to get refunds for clients. We had a lot of ex-Thomas Cook staff who had joined us, and they hadn’t been self-employed for long enough to get any grants. So we’ve really tried hard to help get the guys some income.

The most frustrating and challenging part for us all is the fact that we’ve got no control over anything. You had the travel corridor situation that was chaos every week of the whole summer. You’ve got senior government officials making comments that cause you the following day to take hundreds of calls from very concerned clients. And I suppose the biggest challenge is that we are not supported or respected as an industry. We’ve got taskforces from the government with no industry people. And I feel that is a real challenge to leaders who are trying to push their businesses through this treacle.

How have you been looking after your team, and your agents? What steps have you put in place to look after their wellbeing in this period?

We are a predominantly homeworking and luxury homeworking business, and a lot of homeworkers had commission that they had to pay back because of all the cancellations. So, the first thing we did from a mental wellbeing perspective was that we made it very clear to all of our homeworkers that they only needed to pay that back when they can afford to. Fortunately, we’ve always looked after our business and our profits, so in terms of cash, we didn’t have any issues with that.

And because we had been positive and we ran so many campaigns on flexible bookings, we think we did so much to generate inquiries and sales that they could earn an income from. And if you think about wellbeing, it can be affected by financial pressures. So we did everything we could to take that pressure away.

We also worked with other companies to get other income or income streams for them. We have weekly Zoom calls. We have newsletters. We have a drop-in every day at 2pm just for chatting. It’s not all about work. We’ve done loads of things together. We planted some flowers and over the summer we watched them all grow and hoped that we would grow sales too! We did some charity work for one of our homeworkers who is going through a horrific cancer experience at the moment. So, you know, we have done a lot. We’ve entered the lottery every week for all of us to have hope that we’re going to win big!

What positive lessons have you discovered about yourself, or the company, during the crisis? Will they change the way you run the business in future?

I always thought we had a very strong business. We’ve grown over 13 years, and this has been a massive test and I am delighted to say that as strong as I thought we were, we are stronger. Sometimes people would say, ‘why aren’t you loads bigger’? And we’ve always said, it’s about quality not quantity. That has absolutely surfaced so well during this pandemic. So the positive is that we’ll continue with our strategy, and we’ll invest even more heavily in people to take us even further than before. Our team are such a dream team that it has made this whole situation so much better.

The other thing is that we’ve all valued ourselves as travel agents, and we’ve all recognised that travel agents add value. So we will turn and walk away from a booking away if clients think we’re going to be as cheap as online. We are not a booking engine, and I think that we’ve reinforced that within our own business.

We always talk about the reasons you should use a good travel agent, and I think that should be one of the key positives that has come out of this whole situation for the industry. Hopefully, suppliers will understand our value and they will open doors… and clients will remember that we’ve been there for them 24/7.

For more mental health resources visit TTG’s Mental Health Hub and look out for more Get Travel Leaders Talking videos being released every Wednesday.