✨✈️Life begins at the end of your comfort zone✈️✨

My Journey in the Travel Industry started just over a year ago when I started working as a Travel Consultant for a Travel Agency in my town, below is a photo of my first day.💗

Previously I had been working in a clothes store in my local town for minimum wage. When I first started there at 16 years old the wages were only £4.05 an hour! I made some amazing friends there who I will forever be grateful for and I enjoyed leaving school and having a job to go to at weekends. I felt like I had some responsibility which was nice.🛒🛍️

As time went on and I did my GCSEs I had missed one of the marks I needed for the sixth form in my town and I was really gutted. I was training every day for my upcoming national championship fight for boxing so the revision did take a bit of a backseat.🏋️‍♀️🥊

From day dot I had always wanted to be a social worker and I tried my best to get the grades to go to uni. I received some good grades despite not getting the ones I had hoped for and went on to do level 3 Health and Social Care at my local college. I did the course for 2 years, I loved it. I did have to retake my exam the year after as I had just missed the mark AGAIN. I feel like I am just one of those people who don't succeed the first time but I never get up and always get there.💪

After passing my college course I instantly looked into universities I could go to, I was so excited I had chosen 2 universities which were close to home. I didn't want to be a million miles away from home, it didn't interest me in the slightest. I had received a place in my first choice university but I never took the place in the end, after doing an induction day I decided it just wasn't for me. I decided to work full time in the clothes shop which I had previously only been working weekends.📚🎒

After around 3 years of working and looking for new jobs and opportunities to apply for, I had been in contact with one of my good friends Rebecca who had said the travel agency she worked for was looking for new people. I instantly applied. I am such a spontaneous person I had applied for a night club bouncer job as well as a carer and a support worker.💕

I think this was one of the points in my life when I wasn't sure what I actually wanted to do, I knew I couldn't be a social worker without going to university so I just let life take its course. I had received the really good news that I had been successful in applying for the travel academy role (Basically an unqualified training travel consultant)🤓 ✍️

From November 2019 - March 2020, I had been doing numerous training days and I even spent a week in Sheringham training to do all the things I needed for my job, I loved being away from home and learning. It was strange because I'd never traveled alone (I mean it wasn't a million miles away from my home but I still felt nervous.) Parts of the week I felt really alone but I was on the beachfront so every morning before I headed over to the shop I was training at I'd have a walk along the pier and take some photos of the waves.🚆🌊

From 16th March 2020 (My Birthday!) when Coronavirus was starting to spread in the UK the travel academy staff had been told they would be put onto furlough. I was then told later that day I had lost my job. I was so gutted, I had worked so hard over the 4 months I had been training but this was really common amongst people I knew, some of those people never got their job back. Towards the end of March we were told by the government we would be going into a lockdown and only essential shops could be open so our shop was closed and we were told to stay at home.😔

We were then assessed on our skills and sales over the time we were in the shop before coronavirus and we had the opportunity to apply for the qualified travel consultant role.

At this point, I had been at home for 4 months, I was lucky enough to get 80% of my wages for the whole time I was off. I decided to go for it, the travel academy role had been made redundant so there was no way I would have been able to stay where I was. what was the worst that could happen? Was all the training I worked so hard to do enough?🤷‍♀️

I just decided it is now or never, I had nothing to lose so I did my telephone interview and a few days later I had a call from the lady to say I had been successful in qualifying to be a travel consultant, I was then told I could go back to the shop on August 1st, 2020.🙌 🎉

I had started back and got into the swing of things again and felt so thankful I had been lucky enough to keep my job, one of my colleagues never got her job back and it was hard to go back and work without her. Here's a photo from when we got to do some training on the lovely Emirates airline.😢 🇦🇪

I never thought I was capable of qualifying, I had become more confident in my skills and booked a few holidays as well as learning how to sell foreign currency. Things were all going so well and we were getting lots of bookings for next year. (This year had been a right off with countries being restricted for travel and local lockdowns etc)🤗

On 31st October 2020 we were told again that the country would be going into a second lockdown and that we would have to work from home, an idea I wasn't too keen on I must say. We had our last day in the shop on Halloween and enjoyed dressing up and helping our customers for the last day in-store.💀 🎃

From the first week of November we started working from home, I was worrying about nothing really I picked it up so quickly. That brings my story to today. I am still working from home, hoping to be back in the shop by December 2nd but as we do not know what is going to happen I'll just have to ride the waves as they come. I work 15 hours a week at home which is really nice because I can still make people's holiday dreams come true, from my own front room!📱 🛋️

I am so incredibly lucky and blessed to have my job and still be able to work. A lot of my colleagues and friends have lost their jobs due to coronavirus which has been awful.❌ 😓

A quote I always love to live by, one I had originally heard when I was about 6 years old on a Mario and Luigi video "When the going gets tough, the tough get going".

If someone asked me for advice I would have to say just keep going. Things worth having are never easy to get. I have picked that up through living my life, we must keep going as the sun will shine again!🌈 🌞

✨✨Thank you for reading my blog, I cant wait to share my next adventure with you all!✨✨

Lots of love,

Chloe x