The founder of Lincolnshire agency Travel Angels is seeking more agents to help her business grow, after she celebrated two years on the high street and 10 years as an agent.
Luan Thornhill, owner and director of Travel Angels, opened her agency in Epworth, near Doncaster, in 2023.
Sales for the financial year from August 2024 to July 2025 were just over £1 million and now she’s targeting £1.1 million for the current financial year.
So far, sales are 45% of the target, just four-and-a-half months into the financial year, she noted.
A member of Protected Trust Services, she is seeking self-employed homeworkers who can join as a ‘Personal Travel Planner’ and she may take on another apprentice in 2026, depending on sales.
Currently, her team includes Helena Moss, travel administrator, and apprentice Mazey Bell, who work in the Epworth shop, with remote support from freelance marketeer Rhiannan Vestol.
Thornhill held a celebration recently to mark two years in the shop and 10 years as a travel agent, hosting about 80 customers who enjoyed fizz and tapas while hearing about holidays from Typically Holidays and Newmarket Holidays.
Newmarket offered an incentive to book, which generated three new bookings and a new customer.
Thornhill started in travel in 1998 as a Thomson rep, working in mainland Spain and the Canaries for three years. She worked in other sectors before becoming a Hays Travel homeworker in 2015.
She joined PTS in 2022 in order to develop her own brand, taking the name from a client who always called Thornhill her “travel angel”.
In 2023, her younger son left home to join the Army – following in the footsteps of her older son – so she decided to “fill the potential empty-nest syndrome” by opening a shop.
Coincidentally she ended up in the same building where she had her first weekend job aged 16, when it was an off-licence.
“It’s a beautiful shop, so we are lucky,” she noted.
“Helena joined me part-time on admin in May 2024 and I took Mazey on as an apprentice through the Jet2 scheme and AS Training in December 2024 – she is due to finish her apprenticeship as a travel consultant in January 2026,” said Thornhill.
“We are doing very well and our clients have increased massively [with] those who want to walk in, talk, see someone, get a coffee and talk travel planning.”
She said selling adventure and touring is her “passion” and she has just returned from a fam trip to South Africa with Tourism that Cares which was a “dream to achieve”.
Furthermore, Epworth is an “affluent” village and Thornhill is a member of the Epworth Business Forum with other independent shop owners.
“We get together to drive ideas to bring footfall to the town for our businesses, so we really are passionate about keeping the village alive with local people shopping,” she said.
“Part of this work was to create a new website www.loveepworth.co.uk which has recently launched to showcase our businesses.
“We are the first to have a banner on this website; we have been advertising Christmas markets, so I am the first business on the front/home page, ready for peaks.”
Also in preparation for peaks, she has trialled Hubby eSim in order to gift the company’s international data plans to customers.
“We have just partnered with them; it’s something new for us to give away to our customers on bookings made in January and February,” she added.
