Designer Travel is offering travel agents leaving the industry the chance to refer clients and earn a percentage of the commission on the booking.

Agents who sign up to the new rewards scheme, Travel Partnerz by Designer Travel, can earn a sliding scale of up to 30% of the commission on the booking by referring clients to the agency to fufil the booking.

The agency already runs customer referral scheme Designer Rewards, which was relaunched this week, and a similar scheme for retiring Designer Travel homeworkers, but this is the first time it has been extended to other independent travel agents. Agents can earn up to three times as much in Travel Partnerz in comparison with the customer scheme.

Managing director Amanda Matthews hopes the scheme might act as a ‘lifeline’ to help agents exiting the sector as a result of the pandemic to retain the client base they have built up over years, and potentially return to the industry once the market recovers.

She said: “It breaks my heart that colleagues in the industry are facing such turmoil and having to leave to go out of travel, some after 10 or even 30 years.

“This is special, separate scheme for people leaving the industry to allow them to earn up to 30% of what they would have earnt had they taken the booking.

“We are trying to give people a little light at the end of the tunnel. This is not about us trying to take clients. It’s about giving them a lifeline. It means they can keep in contact with the industry if they want to come back and it gives some recompense for what they have done.”

Agents need to sign up to the scheme in order to recommend clients, friends and family members who want to make a booking. Designer Travel will then fufil the booking and the agents will earn a percentage of the commission.

If agents decide to return to the industry, they can then return to making the bookings themselves for their clients.

The scheme will also pay out commission for repeat bookings and sales leads do not have to be purely for luxury holidays, added Matthews.

The customer Designer Rewards scheme, which allows clients to earn money to spend on holidays through an online account, attracted 57 new sign-ups within three days of its relaunch at the start of this week.

Any agents interested in signing up to the new Travel Partnerz scheme can contact Designer Travel via their Facebook page.