FRONTLINE
Q. How did you come to work with your husband in business?
In the time when I was homeworking, I met my now husband Ian who worked for CCI, which was a corporate firm. When CCI was sold in 2015, he came and worked with me, which was strange at first. We both worked from home and honestly nearly divorced within three weeks because it was such a huge change. But it’s just a case of adapting and it worked out great in the end, as our knowledge together is a force to be reckoned with. Ian had previously overseen 250 staff while I was on my own, so when we opened our agency in the garden centre, that became invaluable.
Q. Tell me about your two shops. The garden centre is in our village, Ellerker, East Riding of Yorkshire. We would go there to escape the four walls of our home for lunch or coffee. It’s not even a 10-minute walk. Sometimes we’d see some clients there. When the owner of the garden centre mentioned he had a space available, I was unsure, but with Ian in my corner, I had the confidence to take it on. He gives me that confidence to move forward. We opened in 2019 and later opened a market town branch in Howden.
MEL White
The White’s Travel founder talks to Ella Sagar about setting up shop in a garden centre and recovering from the pandemic
Q. How did you get into travel? I started in travel straight after leaving school. I was a chambermaid in a hotel for three months and my career advisor called me and said a travel agency in town was interviewing and asked if I was interested. I was 16 and I had gone on maybe four or five trips by car and ferry to France as a child. I had no idea what a travel agency was, so it was a bit of a learning curve. I will always laugh because I earned decent money as a chambermaid, about £400 a month, but on the travel agency YTS scheme it was about £29.50 a week.
Q. What was the next step? I asked my parents what they thought. My mum advised me to look at the bigger picture and what could come out of it in two years’ time, and they supported me through it. I took the job and did three days a month at Leeds City College for a year. The agency took me on as a fully paid staff member about eight months after joining. Two years later I was headhunted by a corporate firm in Hull and worked in the leisure department until 2006. In 2019, I decided to take the leap and go on my own and started as a homeworker under Bakewell Travel.
22 17 JULY 2025
Q. How do you find the differences between corporate, homeworking and retail? They are completely different environments. With corporate travel and homeworking, you do not have the clients sat in front of you waiting for you to do the job. I did not realise how much that would affect me until I had my first client sat in front of me at the garden centre. I was like a duck out of water! It took me about four months to get into that pace of being frontline again.
Q. How did you get through the Covid pandemic? It was very challenging. I always say to people that, for a travel agent, Covid is nowhere near over. The majority of business owners who have got travel agencies have probably still got a significant bounce-back loan to pay off, plus all the other loans that you had to take out just to save your business. That said, the business absolutely took off when we were allowed to travel after Covid. All those bucket-list trips were amazing to deal with. It offset all the form filling, Covid tests and stress from before.
Q. What is trending in sales now? We have seen a big lift in groups, touring and longer duration holidays at the garden centre. Touring is becoming so popular, especially in the 55-plus age group. Our sales for Newmarket and Titan are increasing year on year. Cruising is always popular, but it depends on what your demographic is. At the garden centre, I would say 80% to 90% of our clients are from the older retired generation. The market town store is a completely different beast and is more about package holidays to places such as Spain and Greece, which also comes with more price-matching with online.
WHAT LED YOU TO SET UP YOUR OWN BUSINESS?
A £120,000 booking is what made me move to set up on my own. It was my biggest-ever booking for a client of mine when I was in the leisure department at the corporate firm. It was for a 50th birthday to Mauritius in 2005, so that was a massive amount of money at the time. And I distinctly remember that none of my bosses picked up the phone to tell me “well done” or give me a pat on the back for a good job. From that minute on, I thought I could do this myself and make a living out of it. It gave me the confidence to get out there and do it on my own, which I had been wanting to do for a while. It was a big push for me but in the back of my mind, I knew I could do it because I’d got that booking over the line. I absolutely
love what I do, because we get people travelling and
make sure they have a great time. The number of flowers, chocolates and wonderful
reviews we get fills me with pride for the team. I love that we get all that positivity from clients because there is nothing better.
Mel with husband Ian
travelweekly.co.uk
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