Strictly Business: Victoria Bruce-Miller, Travel By Victoria

I got into travel… from a young age. My parents had a hotel in Suffolk, and later I combined working in hotels with my love of travel. I then studied hospitality management and worked in London doing events.

After a few years, I moved to New Zealand and ended up running a luxury lodge – I realised there was a whole industry of representation, sales and marketing within travel.

After 10 years in New Zealand, where I also worked for a DMC, I came back to the UK and set up my own representation business, Fred & Mildred, which was successful. When the pandemic came, it was time for a break.

I had an inside knowledge of UK companies and knew 360 Private Travel was the one I would love to work for should I ever switch over to selling travel, so I approached them and moved to become a partner.

I set up my agency business… in July 2020. It wasn’t an ideal time, but it gave me the opportunity to learn and put everything in place so that when restrictions were lifted I could really go for it.

The area of my business growing the most is… within entertainment. I’m lucky to have been connected to fantastic clients in that sector who share their trusted networks with me, so my business is growing by referral.

The supplier I have the strongest relationship with is… One&Only. I’m fortunate to have strong relationships within the travel industry through my work in representation, but I’ve just come back from an incredible week with One&Only and parent company Kerzner International visiting Cape Town and Dubai.

They went over and above to showcase their properties and the destinations; I look forward to recommending them to clients.

My proudest career achievement is… not giving up. Going from having a successful representation business, then being faced with the pandemic and realising it was time for me to make the switch to a different area of travel, to now growing my new business selling luxury travel to clients.

I’m proud of not giving up, digging deep and not being scared to make a change when I needed to.

My industry bugbear is… Agents going on fam trips when they know they don’t have the business to support that supplier after the trip. The ones that go to trade shows with everything paid for and never deliver any business.

I think that’s wrong and there should be rules in place that prevent the ‘lifestylers’ – those people who are just working in travel because they like the lifestyle, but for whatever reason don’t really need to make money.