Episode 2 - The First Steps: How I Built a Successful Travel Business
Connect and get in touch with HollyDay Travel
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EPISODE SUMMARY
Host Introduction
Holly Velardo – Founder and owner of HollyDay Travel, a boutique home-based travel agency in Port Noarlunga, South Australia
25 years of travel industry experience; started HollyDay Travel 8 years ago while raising 5 children (including twins)
Vice Chair on the board of ATAC (Australian Travel Agents Cooperative)
South Australian Representative for the TIME (Travel Industry Mentor Experience) program
Background Story
Started career straight after Year 12, completing an Advanced Diploma in Tourism at TAFE
Worked for various companies, including incentive travel and Venture Holidays (Head of Retail Department)
After having twins (children 4 and 5), decided to start her own business
Chose to be a completely independent agent and joined ATAC for support and buying power
COVID Impact & Transformation
Both Holly and her husband Angelo (who worked at Adelaide Airport) lost their travel industry jobs during COVID
Had to find alternative employment quickly while keeping HollyDay Travel open
Used the COVID period to focus on education and business development
This period became the foundation for significant business growth
Six Steps to Travel Business Success
Education and Continuous Learning
Focusing on the Customer
Implementing Systems
Building a Supportive Network
Overcoming Fear and Building Determination
Setting Clear Goals
Key Takeaways
Building a successful travel business takes time — it won’t happen overnight
Each person’s journey is different: find what resonates with your situation
Take at least one actionable item from the episode to implement immediately
Mentorship, continuous learning, and community support are essential
Customer focus and relationship building are crucial for long-term success
READ THE FULL PODCAST TRANSCRIPT HERE
Hello and welcome to episode two of Travel Business Unlocked. I am Holly Velardo, the founder and owner of HollyDay Travel.
We are a boutique, home-based travel agency in Port Noarlunga, South Australia, located right on the beautiful beaches.
Welcome, welcome, welcome to all of our wonderful listeners, and thank you so much for all of the great feedback I received — the DMs and messages I got from last week’s quick introduction to the podcast.
I’m excited to share with you this week six incredible steps that really helped me be successful in building my travel business.
This is all about me and my journey this week.
This is what I did, and I understand that your journey could look very different, or could start from a very different point. But what I really hope you get out of this is at least one great tip or insight that you can implement in your business, or you can share with someone you know who is either struggling or trying to build their own business
I also want to tell you a little bit of background on me and my business, HollyDay Travel.
For those of you who don’t know, I started HollyDay Travel eight years ago.
I’ve been a travel agent for 25 years. I went straight from finishing Year 12, went to TAFE, got my Advanced Diploma in Tourism and became a travel agent.
My absolute first job in travel was with a company where it was incentive points. They worked with large companies here in Adelaide, and all of their team would earn a certain amount of incentive points and then they would come to us. We would craft incredible itineraries for them to use these points, and they were able to have some amazing holidays.
This is where I found my passion and I knew that I wanted to craft itineraries, I wanted to help people, and I wanted to bring so many people’s travel dreams to become true.
That’s where I started. Then, I worked for a couple of small businesses in Adelaide.
I have five children, so I was on and off on maternity leave during those years of working. I was always very grateful to be able to return to work three or four days a week, or whatever suited me.
With these companies, we created incredible relationships with each other. And then I was asked, once I had three kids, I was asked to go and work for Venture Holidays — which a lot of you will have heard of. They were a big wholesale company here in South Australia, and I was the Head of their Retail Department.
I ran that for a couple of years before I then fell pregnant with my twins. When I was on maternity leave with the twins, this is when I decided I could never go back and work for somebody else again.
Going from three children to five children was a huge step, along with the logistics of running a household with that many people. So I talked to my husband Angelo, and decided I would start my own business.
This was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done, but also one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Starting this business, I had so many questions. I didn’t really know where to start. I didn’t know if I wanted to join a host agency, I didn’t know if I wanted to be independent… but I knew I just wanted to get started.
After doing quite a bit of research, I decided to take the plunge, go with it, and hope that my clients would follow me if I opened a business. And I went for it! I chose to be a completely independent agent and decided to join as part of ATAC. So, ATAC is the Australian Travel Agents Co-operative.
What they are is a member-owned co-operative that provides a lot of support, many many resources, and great buying power to independent travel agents.
So this for me felt like the right fit. And I joined with them eight years ago and I am still with them. I am also now the Vice Chair on the board of ATAC and I have been a board member for almost four years and I'm incredibly proud now to be a member of the board and also helping represent travel agents all around Australia.
When I started my business, we were two years in, there was a lot of teething issues. There was just me. I hadn't been in a company that had very good systems in place. There were things like Word Documents and invoices that just weren't ever part of a very good system. And I struggled with this when I was working there, but knew that things needed to change.
So I implemented little bits and pieces, as much as I could into my business. But also being a busy mum of five, I just took things slowly.
So it took me two years and I built an incredible business I was really proud of. I was then making a full-time income or more than I was when I was working for other companies.
And then as we all know, the world stopped.
We had COVID and my husband Angelo also worked in the travel industry. He worked for dnata at Adelaide Airport. So very quickly our lives changed with five children in private school that year. So we had to do some very quick thinking. We both had to get other jobs very quickly while I kept HollyDay Travel open and as you all know, what it was like over COVID. There was many, many struggles. But this is where the foundation of my business really took off and really started. And this was where my mind shifted and I realised that things can change at the drop of the hat. And I decided that during this time, instead of really focusing on my new job, which I did and I love—well—I didn't love it, but I enjoyed it enough and I did what I had to do to get by and pay the bills. But I really, really focused on educating myself and making sure that once COVID was over, I knew I wanted a business that would just absolutely thrive and take off.
And I wanted to believe that I could do that.
So I'm going to share with you six steps that I believe have helped me along the way.
Step 1: Education
The first one for me was absolutely education and continuous learning. I had not been a business owner. We did own a pizza bar, Angelo and I, for 12 years. This was a family-run business. It was nothing like owning a travel agency and all of the things that involved with that. So I was really flying blind here. I didn't really know where or who to reach out to or what to do to take it to the next level. I just knew that I had to. It was something I'd dreamed about.
So what I did during COVID was I did a lot of research into what I could do to run a business. I found some incredible books that were just so helpful to me. But I also did a lot of googling and looked for a lot of resources that were related to travel agents and travel agent businesses.
And one of the first things that I came across was the Travel Agent Achievers Podcast with the beautiful Roslyn Ranse. For me, I reached out. Obviously, money was very tight at that time and she was running a mastermind programme for travel agents. And what I did was reach out. She had a Friday coffee morning. I started with joining that every Friday morning to gain information, just kind of build a little bit of a community, see what it was all about. And within a couple of weeks I then joined her mastermind group. And this was really what changed my business.
So for any of you out there, if you haven't heard of Travel Agent Achievers, jump on. Ross is incredible. Her podcasts are amazing. I am still part of her mastermind group and this is one of the things that helped me the most.
Another one that I came across was Stephanie Myers’ Academy. This was a great programme for me to jump in and just learn some ways that I could start my business, but also where I could increase sales, where I could do a whole lot of things. It was much more of a course where I physically sat down. Stephanie ran, I think it was back then maybe monthly webinars that we could join. So I would jump onto those. And it was again, just having other people in the community to ask questions to. So if you don't know Stephanie as well, jump on. She runs an incredible programme as well, and she has some great events as well that you can attend.
Another one that I found was not travel-related at all, but it was a podcast called My Daily Business by Fiona Killackey. This was something I listened to every single week. She would put out two episodes quite regularly and I would listen to this, and it was really her 10-minute quick tip episodes that I found incredibly important. So whether it was just something I could implement in the business quickly, a new way I could learn something that was just for small business owners. She is amazing, Fiona Killackey. Her podcast is huge now. She also has an unbelievable book called Passion Purpose Profit. This is one of the first books that I read after listening to her podcast and knowing that I needed to follow this book. So I needed to know this in my own business and look at how I could implement things and become successful. So I highly recommend you grab her book Passion Purpose Profit. She has also released a second book as well and I'm sorry Fiona, I can't remember the name of that right now. (Business to Brand by Fiona Killackey)
Another book that I read was Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. Now that was a very eye-opening book for me. It taught me so many things about the numbers. I'm not going to go all into it. Grab that book. It is incredible. Have a read of it and it will definitely make you know your numbers.
So I also just spent a whole lot of time educating myself in any way, listening to so many podcasts, reading so many articles about business and just spent an incredible amount of time knowing that this was one way that I could create a business.
Step 2: Focusing on the Customer
We all know that during COVID how hard things were for all of us, for us as travel agents. I know there are so many people in the industry who still are suffering from that. They haven't either returned to the industry or they still have the fear of what could happen if something like that, another event in the world happens like this again.
So for me it was all about staying in touch with my clients, making sure the customers knew I was there. Even though I had another job, I spent every night refunding them, helping them, rearranging their trips, everything that needed to be done to support my current clients.
But also one thing that I really loved doing so much during COVID was I joined a lot of community groups on Facebook and there was, I would always see stories or things about people who had been stranded or didn't know how to get home or would be on a friend's Facebook post or be newspaper story or something like that. And I would just reach out to anybody and everybody who needed help. And for me, I've always been one to give back.
And this was an incredible thing for me to do for myself. It wasn't doing this for anybody else. It felt good to help others. They were stuck, they were stranded. There were so many people who couldn't get home or didn't know how, or didn't understand the border rules or whatever it was. I just reached out to as many many people as I could and just helped everyone.
Obviously there was no money exchanged for any of that. It was just about me helping and giving back.
And one of the other things that I also did was I just kept sending weekly newsletters to all of my clients throughout that process. I kept them updated. I stayed positive throughout the process, let them know I was there. I always had social posts updating with what was going on in the world. I'd give them calls, I'd send them text messages. I'd just reach out to make sure that they were also okay in everything that was happening around the world. And I was there to listen if anybody needed anything.
And I think this was one of the biggest things that really did help my business go from just me before COVID to when the doors opened and borders opened and the world opened again.
My business took off incredibly quickly. And I am forever grateful for that. And the incredible people I've met and the clients—many, many my clients are now really good friends of mine. And I still have that same theory that this is about them, this is about the customer. And as long as we can help them and give them what they need, then we're going to be able to have a very successful business and a very happy life.
Step 3: Systems
So being able to do all of this was amazing, but it wasn't going to help me to be able to scale my business. So I knew that I really, really needed some systems, but I didn't really know where to find them, what to do, how to come across them. So this was a session that Ros from Travel Agent Achievers ran in her mastermind group. And this session was amazing.
We broke down our business. She taught us to look at every single part of our business and then also gave us a whole lot of ideas on systems that we could implement and ways that we could streamline things and make things a whole lot better.
At this point it was just me. So I really just focused on what I would need when the borders opened, what I would need in place and I could immediately know that I could cope, I could do it all on my own.
So that was instrumental in my business. Unbelievable. And from there I have implemented so many systems. It's something that we look at every single week in our business. We look at ways we can improve things, ways we can be smarter. Just… there's so many ways! I will do a whole episode on systems in the future, so listen out for that one. But systems, systems, systems. I cannot talk to you enough about how important this is in your business.
Step 4: Building a Supportive Network
For me, being a home-based business, having been on maternity leave, always working for small companies, I haven't really had that exposure to networking or having a huge amount of other travel professionals around me. So this was something very new for me.
And also just needing to find the right mentor and obviously being part of Ros’ Travel Agent Achievers group, there were so many people and there still are from that day one that are still there within her community that we were able to connect with and it was being able to be part of like-minded groups.
It wasn't just the travel industry that I decided to network with, but I definitely went on to many other community groups. Whether it was other industry professionals, whether it was sporting groups, school groups, whatever it was, it was really just building up those networks and people and staying current and also just doing something a little bit different to make it easier.
Now, mentorship is so important. I cannot talk to you enough about this. Ros was my first mentor and she was absolutely amazing. And I think for everything she taught me.
I then needed to take my business to a new level and I needed a one-on-one mentor. And so I joined the TIME Community which is the Travel Industry Mentor Experience. If you don't know about it, you absolutely need to hear about it. This programme is incredible. There will be links to everything I've mentioned in the show notes, so wait for those.
But please have a look at the TIME Community. I joined this straight out of COVID pretty much, probably six months out and got an incredible mentor, Matt Lewis. He was based here in the Barossa Valley in South Australia. And whilst I was working with him, it's a six-month programme where you get one-on-one sessions—24 hours of one-on-one sessions.
I was extremely lucky to have won a scholarship for this first time that I did it. So during that period of working with Matt, I had scaled my business. I had already hired one VA previous to starting. But by the time I'd finished with Matt, I had six VAs or virtual assistants for those of you who don't know what that is, working within my business. So that has been an incredible help for me and I will do a whole episode on that as well on how to hire VAs, how I found them, how we work with them, and everything like that.
But that was my first experience of working with TIME. Then I had about a year on my own working with the team. Everything was going really well but I wanted to scale my business to another level.
So I joined TIME for a second time and my beautiful mentor, Kim Wethmar. We have just finished our six months together and it was unbelievable. But again, I will do an episode on this and I will tell you all about that another time.
So mentorship is so, so, so important and if you don't know where to start, TIME is incredible. So reach out, ask me any questions and I can also give you some options there.
The other thing with the building a supportive network was collaboration. I don't have all the answers, I don't know what to say all the time, but I do know where to get it. And this was really important for me during this time was that if I didn't know what to say to people or how to help them, I had built this community of people around me that I could rely on and I knew they would help me or I would help them when needed.
Step 5: Overcoming Fear and Building Determination
Now number five, overcoming fear and building determination. This for me is a big thing. So you might see me talk on stage and think, “Oh wow, she's so confident.”
I am really not that confident. I get very nervous. I often stumble over my words. I don't know what to say. I can't think quick on my feet.
So I do like to be organised and prepared. I don't like walking into a room and networking and not knowing anyone. That literally makes me shake with fear and I feel like I am going to be sick.
So facing these unknowns and acknowledging and confronting some of my fears was really something that I had to do. I really had to shift my mindset and just know that I really wanted to be resilient and I really, really, really had the drive and determination to succeed.
But shifting my mindset wasn't about that. It was about believing in myself.
I had always dreamed of being a successful business owner. I always wanted a travel agency where I could employ people, I could help so many people with their dreams come true, create incredible itineraries for people. But I always had this doubt in my mind of “Why me?”
So being able to shift that mindset and really believe that I could do it and I did deserve to do this really, really helped during that time.
This is something I still work on all the time. The fears have not all gone away and I still do work on this. But it is just having that belief in yourself and also staying very, very focused.
Step 6: Setting Clear Goals
This is so, so, so important. At that time when everything was shut down and I didn't really know what was going to happen when the borders opened, I just knew that I wanted a business that was going to change my life, that was going to give me choices in life to have this. To travel more. To have some of the nice things I'd always dreamed of, but also to be able to create incredible experiences for my clients, to give me the freedom to work the hours that I wanted to work, to spend the time with my children, go to their school plays, go to their sporting events if it's in the middle of the day, be able to do all of that and not miss any of that.
So I set some very clear goals during this time. I was very specific with what they were and I looked at these goals every single week and I worked towards them. And I didn't achieve them all when I wanted to, but I set them again. Or if I did achieve them, then I would set bigger goals.
And many of the goals became true before I even knew that they would. It was incredible. So if you don't write it down and you don't put your goals on paper, they won't come true. So please, please write down your goals. Reach out if you've got any questions about them, where to start, but dream big and write down your goals.
So thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Travel Business Unlocked. I hope that my six steps that really helped my travel business grow will really help yours and play a crucial role in your journey just like they have in mine.
Remember that your path is completely different or maybe completely different to mine and that's fine!
But what you really need to do is find what resonates with you and your business, whether it's a new book, reaching out to a mentor, setting a new goal. Please, please take one thing away from this and apply it to your own business this week.
So building a successful travel business is never going to happen overnight. It just won't. It's something that is filled with so many challenges, so many successes and so many stories.
So I would love to hear if you have any questions, if you want to share your own experiences, please feel free to reach out. I love hearing from you and I love learning about all of your journeys again.
So thank you once again for listening and I look forward to continuing on this journey with you. So please share this with anybody that you think might gain something from this and I look forward to tuning in next time. Thank you.
