NST Careers

Our customers are at the heart of everything we do here at NST. That’s why our Educational Sales and Tour Operations teams are filled with people who are passionate about putting customers first.

Educational Travel Advisor Roles (Sales Team)

As a telephone based Educational Travel Advisor for NST, your role is to actively develop relationships with potential or existing customers and support them with selecting and securing their next NST school tour experience. Working to a defined sales target the main duties include:

• Proactively contacting teachers, educational visit co-ordinators and other group leaders within your defined sales territory to discuss current and future educational visit plans
• Developing a thorough understanding of your customers’ travel requirements, indentifying and matching them to the educational travel experiences within our extensive school tours product range
• Using in-house systems and expertise to create educational trip quotes and provisional bookings to meet your customers’ needs and expectations
• Liaising closely with your customers to actively progress quotes and enquiries to confirmed bookings

So, what makes a successful Educational Travel Advisor? As the first point of contact for our customers, creating a great first impression and then taking a consultative approach to promoting our range of school tours and related services in a truly customer-focussed way is the key to becoming a successful Educational Travel Advisor at NST.

Our market place is highly competitive and, as market leader, we pride ourselves on being ‘best in class’ when it comes to delivering enriching outside the classroom experiences to our customers. But our success is not just the products we deliver to our customers, our customers tell us it’s also about the service we provide, therefore we look for the following qualities in our Educational Travel Advisors:

• Excellent communication skills
• Customer-focused approach
• Desire to be the best
• Enthusiasm and high energy
• Strong time management and organisational skills
• Self-motivated with a desire to meet and exceed sales targets

Previous travel industry and/or educational sales experience isn’t essential (although it comes in handy!) as we provide a comprehensive tailored induction and training programme for each of our Educational Travel Advisors. However, self confidence, the ability to be a team player, a desire to learn, and a ‘can-do’ attitude is a must.

Educational Tour Co-ordinator (Tour Operations Team)

Behind every NST school tour, there is an Educational Tour Co-ordinator working hard to ensure every one of our customers has an educational trip that meets and exceeds their expectations.

As a telephone-based Educational Tour Co-ordinator for NST, your main purpose is to take the headache out of planning a school trip for our teacher contacts… and with over 75,000 individuals travelling with us each year, it’s never a dull day at the office in the role of an Educational Tour Co-ordinator!

You will be responsible for supporting a portfolio of customers to ensure their educational visits run smoothly. From the point of booking to the point they return, you will be working closely with your customers to plan a detailed itinerary, ensuring the achievement of learning objectives and safety requirements for their pupils’ educational tour experiences. Main duties include:

• Proactively contacting teachers, school tour co-ordinators and other group leaders to plan their educational tours as efficiently and effectively as possible
• Confirming accommodation and transport requirements with internal and external suppliers, ensuring any travel-related documents are processed in a timely manner
• Liaising with your customers to define and build a clear itinerary for their educational visit, using your detailed knowledge of the chosen destinations, visits and activities to ensure the most effective use of time on tour
• Providing on-tour support to travelling groups, using excellent problem-solving skills to help our group leaders deal with ‘the unexpected’

What makes a successful Educational Tour Co-ordinator? Well, we want every NST customer to feel like a VIP – which is why we employ individuals who are passionate about treating each customer as their most valuable client. It’s what makes our Educational Tour Co-ordinators one of our unique selling points!

To be a great Educational Tour Co-ordinator, you will have:

• experience in delivering outstanding customer service in a busy office environment
• great organisational skills
• a solution-focussed approach to problem solving
• time management and multi-tasking skills
• excellent verbal and written communication skills

Previous travel industry experience is useful, but it’s not essential. Just demonstrate your customer-first attitude, and your ability to provide assistance calmly and effectively, and we will develop the rest…

Interested in applying for one of our Educational Tour Co-ordinator or Educational Travel Advisor roles? Check out our current vacancies…

Our Commercial Departments are responsible for sourcing, creating, delivering and evaluating the core elements that make up our NST school tour range.Although not customer-facing, all of our commercial departments are still customer-focussed. They are responsible for ensuring we use the customer feedback and insight gathered from our close relationships with our customers, to develop high value, quality educational trips, with the right accommodation, visits and transport to meet their needs.What career opportunities exist within our Commercial Departments?

There are numerous career opportunities within our Commercial Departments. Below is a selection of some of the typical roles which exist:

Product Manager

As a Product Manager within the Product and Marketing Department, you are responsible for using market information and customer feedback to develop the best school tour experiences in the relevant and popular destinations and which link to subjects taught in school. Typical tasks include:

• Providing accommodation, visit and transport briefs to our Contract Managers to support supplier negotiations
• Working closely with our Pricing team to ensure our tour packages are both affordable and profitable
• Liaising with our Marketing team members on copy and content for brochures and websites to ensure our key products and services are promoted in the best way
• Supporting our Sales and Operations teams with specialist product knowledge and market information
• Researching the market place, including evaluating customer feedback and competitor activity

Transport Consultant (Air Consultant/Ground Transport Consultant)

Working as part of the Transport Team, our Air and Ground Transport Consultants are responsible for the relationships between NST and our transport suppliers and co-ordinating the coach, ferry, rail or flight requirements for our travelling groups. Typical tasks include:

• Supporting our Sales team in putting together realistic quotes to our clients by identifying potential transport costs and availability
• Providing expert knowledge and information to our Sales and Operations teams on transport elements
• Confirming transport requests with suppliers for travelling groups
• Identifying and communicating schedule changes, alternative transport methods and options in incidents of operational disruption

Destination Services Consultant

Working as part of the Operations team, our Destination Services Consultants are responsible for ensuring we have the available accommodation to meet the needs of our travelling groups. This involves liaising with our contracted hoteliers and agents within our key destinations, as well as identifying ad hoc accommodation options to ensure we can provide the right rooming requirements for our customers. Typical tasks include:

• Using linguistic skills to communicate requirements to our non-UK based hoteliers
• Confirming accommodation reservations with suppliers ensuring details are provided over room requests, arrival and departure times, meal requirements etc to ensure our clients have a smooth check-in process
• Researching ad hoc hotels and liaising with our Tour Co-ordinators and Safety Manager to ensure any non-contracted hotels meet our rigorous security and safety standards

What do we look for in our Commercial team members?

In such a competitive market place, we need people who are innovative, resourceful and experts in their field to enable us to continue developing and delivering educational travel products which are considered high value to our customers, and difficult to replicate by our competitors.

As with any role in NST, we expect individuals within our Commercial teams to live the NST core values of Customer First, Teamwork, Respect, Action, Learning and Fun, alongside their skills, qualifications and/or experience within their particular specialism.

Our support teams in NST are filled with individuals who are focussed on supporting their internal customers within the Commercial Departments and customer facing teams by providing them with the right tools and information to keep delivering quality products and services to our customers.They are the teams behind-the-scenes, making sure we continue to develop better, faster, simpler processes to lead us to greater success.

What career opportunities exist within NST’s Support Departments?

Our Support Departments are the traditional business functions you would expect in most growing organisations. They include Administration, Finance, IT and Human Resources, and most teams work as part of a wider Holidaybreak Education Division function alongside colleagues in our other Education Division Head Office sites in Hertfordshire, Dublin, Cambridge and Ross on Wye, Herefordshire.

Below is a selection of some of the roles which exist within NST Support:

IT Developer

Our in-house IT Developers provide the technical expertise to create the core and periphery business systems which allow our businesses to function in the most efficient way. Working as part of a wider Education Division team, our IT Developers design, develop, test and support software solutions to allow us to continuously improve the way we deliver products and services to our customers. From large scale business systems developments to small scale software projects, the IT Developer role is a fast-paced with plenty of variety.

Finance Assistant

Working as part of the wider Education Division Finance function, our Finance Assistants in Blackpool are responsible for providing accounting support to the NST UK and Dublin businesses. Responsibilities include authorisation and payment of supplier invoices for UK and overseas accommodation, visits, and transport elements, reconciliation of bank accounts, and supporting the production of monthly and annual accounts.

Administrator (Sales Resource/Operations Admin)

Working as either part of our Operations and Sales teams, our Administrators play a key role in ensuring all the paperwork associated with selling and operating of our school tours is provided to our customers and suppliers in the most efficient way. This involves liaising closely with our Educational Travel Advisors and Tour Co-ordinators, to provide the most effective admin support to allow them to deliver an exceptional service to our customers.

What do we look for in our Support Team members?

As with any role in NST, we expect individuals within our Support teams to live the NST core values of Customer First, Teamwork, Respect, Action, Learning and Fun, along side their skills and experience within their particular specialism. For some of our Support Team roles, we also expect a relevant qualification or solid experience in their particular field of expertise, but enthusiasm to support the needs of our internal and external customers, a positive can-do attitude, and the desire to make a difference are the key attributes which makes our Support Team members stand out from the crowd.