Monday Interview: Colman and Rachael Coyne, of Jetset Not Just Travel

A husband and wife team who both used to work for the police have established a growing travel consultancy franchise.

Huddersfield-based Colman and Rachel Coyne run Jetset Not Just Travel, a franchise of the Not Just Travel company. Their enterprise turned over £1.2m last year.

Colman was a detective sergeant in Bradford for many years and Rachael, was a police help desk supervisor. The pair first got involved in organising trips whilst in the police – Colman was event organiser for the Bradford South Police Sports and Social Club.

In that role he organised trips for thousands of police officers, staff and their families all over the world. One of his experiences, in 2010, involved accommodating and bringing back a large holiday group stranded by the Icelandic volcano eruption, which grounded flights across Europe.

The Coynes began their franchise in September 2013, while they were both still with the police, only for Rachel to be diagnosed with breast cancer in December of that year.

She went through two operations and intensive chemotherapy and was too ill to work on the business for many months. However, she has since recovered and the couple have now been so successful with the venture they have been appointed to mentor 74 other franchisees throughout the UK.

Colman explained: “We built the business up slowly, we weren’t pushing for a lot of customers, but it got busier and busier. I left the police in 2015 – about five or six years early – and Rachael left two years ago. Since then we haven’t looked back.

“When Rachael was diagnosed with cancer that came as a big shock. She had 12 months of treatment and at the time I was still doing my full time police job, along with the business. It was a nightmare.

“When something like that happens it changes your perspective. You realise very quickly that you’re only here once and it can be very short, so that drove us to make a go of the business.”

The Coyne’s franchise operation offers everything travel related, ranging from overnight hotel stays to round the world cruises, multi-stop tours and luxury holidays.

The couple said their experience of working for the police has given them a good grounding in how to plan meticulously and closely keep track of customers’ travel itineraries.

Colman stressed that they work hard to look after customers even while they are away on their travels, reacting fast to rearrange passengers’ bookings in the event of missed connections or other disruption.

“We had sales of about £1.2m over the last 12 months, and our next push over the coming 18 months is to reach over £2m,” he added.

“The police job I’d left involved working fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen hour days. We were under so much pressure and you’d go into work not knowing when you’d come back home. You realise there must be more to life than staying on the treadmill every day, just going into work and coming home.

“Now we have our business, we’re working very hard but we’re reaping the rewards from it. It’s a much better lifestyle.”