Captains in the Community

This year our school captains will be establishing connections within our community. We hope to interview a series of local business owners, who generously support our school in a variety of ways. We hope you enjoy our first interview with local business owner Emma Whiting, who supports our school through her contribution to our school raffle. In March our captains visited Emma at her shop.

Q1: When was your business established?

My business, Emma Whiting Travel, was established on October 15, 2006.

Q2: What countries do you suggest to people?

We have lots of countries we recommend to people, I think a lot of it is about where they want to go and why they want to travel. We have a lot of people here that travel because they want to go and experience other countries and cultures to learn about people, food, and history. But a lot of people like to go to places in Europe such as Italy, France, or Germany. Asia has a lot of countries like Thailand and Vietnam that people like to travel to. Some people like to travel to find out about wildlife, they go to places such as Antarctica. Lots of people like to experience Australia which is wonderful. Family holidays are popular in places like Bali or Fiji. So, we have lots of countries that we recommend to people.

Q3: What are some things you enjoy about working in the Clifton Hill Community?

I enjoy working in Clifton Hill and the surrounding areas of Fitzroy North. We like it because we think that a lot of the people in the community are very like-minded, very socially conscious, and very interested in supporting each other. We find the businesses in our little village area are very supportive of each other and like how it’s not a shopping center. The whole area is beautiful, the parks and so forth and we enjoy the fact that things are always going on around the area and how welcoming it is.

Q4: How has COVID-19 impacted your business?

Being a travel agent and the fact that people weren’t able to travel was obviously a difficult thing from a financial perspective. However, in saying that, there were many positives, we were very fortunate to be able to manage our business from anywhere. We were always on the telephone; it didn’t matter if we were in Knox or North Fitzroy we were on the phone to customers. Covid also gave us the ability to change our focus and we spent a lot of time during the lockdown in 2020 finding amazing experiences both in Australia and around the world. We have a really strong team of people who worked through very challenging times, so we were very lucky to be able to continue to work. We also used this opportunity to spend more time with customers, such as elderly clients, talking to them on the phone when some of them were at home by themselves or missing travel was important. We also worked very hard in the area of essential travel getting family and friends back home.

We are very grateful coming out of Covid that people are able to enjoy traveling again.

Q5: Why did you start your business/why did you become a travel agent?

You’re all at the age where you start thinking about what you want to do when you get older. I was very fortunate at around your age, that I was able to go traveling with my parents overseas to Europe and then to America. I was very lucky visiting different countries and so I developed an understanding of different people and that started my real passion for traveling, to experience the world. When I finished school, I was working and studying hospitality. I worked as a manager of a hotel and then I saved up all my money and I decided to get a working holiday Visa to travel and work. That’s when I realized I could work as a travel agent. I worked for 13 years for a big company and then managed a groups of travel agencies, I realized that what I wanted to do, I wanted to actually have my own business and be able to sell the type of travel that I wanted to sell to the type of customers that I wanted and to create my own business around my own vision.

Q6: What’s your favorite thing about owning a travel agency?

So, I think my favorite thing is being proud of what we call our EWT community, they are our amazing customers that have been with us for over 15 years. They are always so supportive, especially so during Covid. Then we’ve got our travel suppliers, they are the people that work with us to ensure that everybody's holidays go smoothly. We get to work with an amazing group of people and have a real sense of community and I think that’s what I love the most. We’ve created a place where we work every day in a job that I love and that is really important. To me it’s important to always be passionate, I still get up now and think I am lucky to help those people create this experience. We got through very challenging times over the past few years, and we are still able to have a laugh, we are still able to have smiles on our faces and be very grateful for the things we could do and that sort of what is the spirit of us.

REFLECTION FROM THE SCHOOL CAPTAINS:

After speaking to Emma, we reflected on the key takeaways from interviewing Emma, they included:

To follow your dreams
Do a job that you love and enjoy
Never Give Up

We thank Emma for giving her time so generously,

Lochie Antoniazzi, Gracie Bird and Belinda Edgar

(Evan Dracos was absent for this interview).

CHPS School Captains

Signing Sing a Rainbow