Travel Counsellors vs Not Just Travel

Both are franchises, and both will take someone with no travel experience. The difference is what you pay at the door and what you keep afterwards. Travel Counsellors asks from £295+VAT (varies by experience) and pays 60%; Not Just Travel sells packages at Lite from £995–£2,995; Elite £14,995+VAT and advertises up to 85%.

In short: Travel Counsellors suits someone who wants the smallest possible upfront commitment from an established, large network and is content with a fixed share. Not Just Travel suits someone willing to buy a package outright — possibly a five-figure one — in exchange for a higher headline share and a refund mechanism if they sell enough in year one.

The model: two franchises, sold differently

Neither of these is a host agency in the strict sense. You are buying the right to trade under an established brand, with its licences, its booking system and its supplier deals behind you. If that distinction is new, the guide to host agencies, franchises and consortia is the place to start.

Travel Counsellors dates from 1994 and records 2,000–2,200 people in the network. Not Just Travel dates from 10 September 2001 and records 550+ (TG#6); 900+ reported in 2021. The second company trades under two names, which trips people up constantly: Not Just Travel is the consumer brand, The Travel Franchise is the name used when recruiting. They are the same business, so reviews of one are reviews of the other.

What it costs to get in

Travel Counsellors is recorded at from £295+VAT (varies by experience), with an ongoing fee of £33–£72.50+VAT/mo. The company publishes no pricing itself — those figures come from the Travel Gossip homeworking chart, dated on the Travel Counsellors profile.

Not Just Travel’s packages are recorded as Lite from £995–£2,995; Elite £14,995+VAT, plus from £99/mo. That is a wide range, because it is not one product: the cheapest package and the Elite package buy different amounts of training, mentoring and marketing support. Ask precisely what is in the tier you are being quoted, and what the next tier up adds.

There is one feature here with no equivalent at Travel Counsellors. “Money-Back Challenge”: the full franchise fee is refunded if a commission target is hit within 12 months. It is a real mechanism rather than a slogan, but it is still a target — ask what the target is in pounds of commission, and what happens if you reach nine tenths of it.

What you keep

Travel Counsellors pays 60% of commission. Not Just Travel advertises up to 85%, which is a ceiling and not a starting point — ask which package and what volume reaches it.

A headline share only matters once you put a booking through it. On a £3,000 package holiday paying 10% supplier commission, the difference between 60% and 85% is £75 on that one sale. Work the numbers for your own expected volume with the earnings guide, then set them against the fee difference.

Protection: who stands behind the money

Our record for Travel Counsellors reads: Holds ATOL 6751 in its own name (CAA register). No ABTA member record was found for Travel Counsellors on the official ABTA member search — consistent with the Travel Gossip chart listing the protection as “ATOL only”. Operates its own trust arrangement. For Not Just Travel: The official ABTA member search lists Not Just Travel with its own ABTA membership, K9413 (a “Not Just Travel - Jetset” listing also appears under P8743) — a stronger position than the “as part of Hays” description in TG#6. ATOL cover is described as held through the Hays partnership; no ATOL in the company’s own name was confirmed.

That second arrangement is worth understanding rather than skimming. Cover held through a partnership is cover held by somebody else, and it is a fair question to ask whose licence number appears on a customer’s confirmation. Both companies’ ABTA and ATOL details have been checked against the official ABTA member search and the CAA’s ATOL register. What each protection actually does is set out in ABTA, ATOL and trust accounts explained.

The honest differences

The money works in opposite directions. Travel Counsellors takes little at the door and a larger share of everything afterwards. Not Just Travel can take a great deal at the door and leaves you more of each booking. Which is cheaper depends entirely on how much you sell, and for how long you stay.

Neither published headline is the whole price. Travel Counsellors’s figures are not published by the company at all, and Not Just Travel’s span a range wide enough to cover several different products. Both need a quote in writing for your circumstances.

Scale is not quality, and neither is newness. Travel Counsellors is the larger network by a wide margin, which tells you about reach and supplier leverage, not about how much attention you personally will get. Ask both how many people your named support contact looks after.

Where our sources disagree, we say so. Not Just Travel’s headcount is recorded as 550+ (TG#6); 900+ reported in 2021 — two different figures from two different years, which is exactly the kind of number worth confirming on a call.

Who each one suits

Travel Counsellors if you want the recognised name and the lowest entry cost, and you would rather give up commission share than capital.

Not Just Travel if you can fund the package, expect to sell enough to reach the higher share, and want the structured launch support the bigger tiers buy.

If neither fits, the full table of every company in the directory shows what else exists at each price point, and InteleTravel against Not Just Travel covers the same franchise from the cheap-entry end of the market.