Trailfinders reviews

- losing lots of staff due to their antiquated policies re: annual leave, etc (see pretty much every other review) - in turn, putting massive pressure on those left. ironically this worsens the problem as it makes it even harder to get leave - inflexibility re: wfh, even when the government advice was to do so where possible(!) - It’s exhausting. while you’re told going into the job that working weekends will be a part of it, what isn’t made clear is that your replacement days off often won’t be together. the combination of 9 hour days with a half hour lunch, often only having a day off between shifts, sometimes finishing at 8pm and restarting at 9am, and the sales pressure can take a huge toll. calling the rosters team about this is frequently unsuccessful as the response you invariably get amounts to “computer says no” - promoting from within is a double-edged sword; in principle it’s encouraging, however as a result a lot of major decision making is now left to a bunch of former salesmen who simply don’t know how to run a company. those in managerial roles are something of a mixed bag. - insufficient training; there has a been an enormous rollout of new product over the last 2 years but the training has amounted to a few memos, quizzes and videos. the company is pivoting from being relatively specialist to a jack of all trades and among many of us, there is a feeling this is not what we signed up for. - a “telman” system that is presumably supposed to monitor consultants in order to increase productivity but is extremely bad for morale. “telman” is a role shared between managers of the company, and basically means one person is responsible for keeping an eye on call volumes throughout the day so as a company we can meet the demand on the phones. depending on who is appointed telman on any given day, the person in this role can be unbelievably condescending and unreasonable, and in general it shows what a complete lack of trust management has in the workforce. there is also a tacit assumption shared among “telmen” that if you’re not available for calls then you’re not doing anything, which is particularly irksome when a lot of the product we sell is new to all of us and requires a great deal of concentration if we don’t want a clients’ itinerary to be littered with mistakes. It’s understandable that the company doesn’t want to lose calls but their proposed solution to this is absurd and doesn’t work. - focus on quantity over quality when it comes to bookings. there is little recognition of the work many consultants do assisting clients with non-commisionable services (such as aftercare). it can be a boring and time consuming element of the job which is why many palm this sort of work off, but those who take ownership of these thankless tasks are the ones maintaining the company’s reputation from a service point of view. this seems to be of little interest to upper management, who are just obsessed with sales sales sales and the bottom line. - limited opportunities for progression outside of London

For some time now this company has been sliding rapidly down hill. Firstly, the back of house departments are woefully understaffed, even though they continue to open 2+ stores each year, which they are struggling to fill. The most basic requests have to go through 2 or 3 layers of bureaucracy before getting a simple question answered, which is apparently lightening the load and streamlining the company. This doesn't really show to the customer due to the top level sales staff that they have working for them. Secondly, this ever increasing amounts of work they are expected to do is leading to them haemorrhaging the best and most experienced staff they have. They are being replaced by new and younger staff which is really getting away from the experienced staff that Trailfinders have built their reputation on. The bonus targets have increased by 40-50% over the last few years therefore making it more and more difficult for staff to hit the same pay outs. The amount of money they make from each booking is the same so the senior management team have decided just to make it harder for regular sales staff to hit targets, and just expect them to work harder by 40-50%. They regularly send figures out internally stating that they are paying out record amounts, this is probably true but they haven't mentioned in this that they have decided to pay the top sellers a higher percentage than the rest of the sales team whilst directing the best and most lucrative sales leads towards the higher sellers, also with taking as many young sales staff as they can this is also misleads the figures as they have more people and more stores than they did last year. Trailfinders pride themselves on never appointing anyone higher than sales consultants from outside the company. This sounds wonderful but in the cold light of day it means that the pool of people to get managers and supervisors from is so small, all you end up with are massively under-qualified people in higher positions who would never have got passed the written application if it was advertised externally. Because of this all you get from any management is the same company line that they have been told to pull. The lack of communication back up the ranks is non-existent and with the lack of any HR team it means you are on your own and they have a "like it or leave" mentality which is why at the moment lots of staff are choosing the later option. The working day is 8hrs and they have decided to add on 1hr compulsory overtime, so a 9hr working day with a 30min break for lunch and that is policed with the upmost intensity. The hours worked on a Sunday are questionable, I don’t know how they have managed to keep shops open passed every other one on the high street, even beyond Sunday trading hours. Not even when it is advised by the government for the shops to shut and give their tired staff a few hours off on a Sunday, they have opted to flaunt these trading laws and flog their staff even more. The fact that Trailfinders are expecting to sell tailor made trips (not really, their all just brochured tours which they convince the customer is a unique trip) but they are expected to be put together either on one hone call or in 10mins admin time that you are allocated before management demanding you go back on the phones. If I were spending the amounts of money that Trailfinders are expecting people to pay I would want to consultant to even seem like they have put some effort in and though about it rather than just cobbling together another generic trip and if a client asks for something that they don't sell then there is no flexibility in trying to get rates. The only reason they have a remotely acceptable rating on here is that they pressure staff into writing 5* reviews on Glassdoor, I have been asked by 2 different managers in 2 different stores to write one.