A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A SPORTS TRAVEL CONSULTANT
An interview with Catriona NunnsWE SAT DOWN WITH CATRIONA NUNNS TO CHAT ABOUT HER ROLE AS A SPORTS TRAVEL CONSULTANT
From coordinating group travel for professional teams to meeting suppliers, Catriona’s days are rarely the same. Her role as a sports travel consultant sits at the intersection of logistics, sport, and hospitality and is essential to ensuring athletes, coaches, and support staff can focus on performance while she takes care of the details behind the scenes.
In this article, she shares what a typical day as an expert sports travel consultant looks like, how her career has changed over the years, and why she finds the role so rewarding.
HI CATRIONA. TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR ROLE AS A SPORTS TRAVEL CONSULTANT.
I’m a Sports Group Consultant, meaning that I am part of the team that deals with group bookings for our sports clients. My role involves dealing with suppliers, talking to clients, and sourcing the best quality fares that suit their travel programme best.
For example, if a tennis team is going to a tournament in Singapore, they’ll come to us and outline their criteria: The competition is across these dates. What flights can you secure for us? Can you find a hotel close to the venue? It’s my job to research all of that for them and put a proposal together.
TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR CAREER BEFORE COMING TO GRAY DAWES SPORTS.
I started out doing something a little different. My first role was at a leisure travel company when I was 18 years old. I did that for 5 years, booking holidays and trips for clients, until I moved into corporate travel.
I worked for the same corporate travel company in Leeds for over a decade until Gray Dawes acquired our business. It was then that I made a bit of a career move and sidestepped to a role dealing with group travel within the sports division, even though I had no previous group travel experience.
It was really interesting to learn about how to build a group travel plan – it definitely requires unique skills. Working in sports travel was also a bit of a change. I’m not a particularly sporty person, even though I’ve always followed big sporting events like the World Cup and the Tour de France. But some guys on the team are real sports fanatics!
However, once you meet the clients, you really get to learn about their sport. I once helped book the travel for a Taekwondo team. I didn’t know anything about Taekwondo until I started talking to the bookers and followed the journeys of the athletes. Suddenly I’d be saying things like: “They must be flying to that city because they’ve got a weigh-in this weekend.”
You develop a feeling for the various dietary requirements of different athletes, their ideal hotel conditions, even what chefs or menus they prefer.
DESCRIBE A TYPICAL WORKDAY FOR YOU
I don’t really have a typical day because every day is different. The first thing I do when I come in of a morning is look through the emails that have come through overnight.
I’ll deal with anything that’s immediately urgent – individual tickets that have come through that need to be dealt with in the next 24 hours. After clearing them, I log in to the shared sports team calendar to check for upcoming group deadlines. For example, tickets might need to be issued before a certain date or an airline might cancel the booking.
I might also have to build a travel booklet for a client. This is a document that outlines all the travel information a team or group needs. For example, I might have a team departing next Monday, and I will send them a booklet with all the traveller names, full flight details, ticket numbers, what extra bags are included, what hotels I booked, and their locations; compiling it can take a little while.
Some days I spend a lot of time on the phone, either giving advice to a group or talking to a supplier regarding meal requests or the arrangement of special assistance. The latter is particularly important as we support a lot of para-athletes that may need extra space cleared on aircraft or on-the-ground guidance at a destination.
Estimated average travel spend of NFL teams for away games
%
The reduction in travel-related carbon emissions targeted by UEFA by 20230
The number of athletes that travelled to the Paris Olympics in 2024
HOW HAS YOUR WORKDAY CHANGED FROM THE START OF YOUR CAREER UNTIL NOW?
When I first started, we didn’t even use emails! It wasn’t a thing. Everything was conducted face-to-face or over the phone.
There was also no social media back then either, so you couldn’t follow sports teams as easily or find out what they were up to on a day-to-day without talking to them directly.
What’s more, there were no apps for travellers. You couldn’t direct them to check-in to a hotel on a smartphone, download an itinerary, or manage their own booking on the go. In fact, I’d say that technology is the biggest change I’ve seen in my career. It’s really noticeable how easily I can now reach clients and suppliers – I’m no longer spending hours on hold anymore!
I think travel is a lot more popular than it used to be, too, both for work and for participating in sport.
WHAT IS THE FAVOURITE PART OF YOUR ROLE? ANY CAREER HIGHLIGHTS?
The favourite part of my role is meeting our suppliers and going out to events. For example, our team was invited to the British Swimming Awards last year in London, and it was such an incredible night.
I’m the supplier champion in our Leeds office. It’s my job to host suppliers who come to the office to carry out training courses or webinars. I’ll also keep on top of the latest incentives and new product news. I might even go and visit a hotel to take a look around.
I love that I’m not just sitting in front of a screen all the time – I actually get to meet the people I speak to. Take the British Swimming Awards, for example. We got to go to the fancy London Hotel and watch Olympic athletes receive awards or their contribution to the sport. I got to put names to faces – I had booked flights for these athletes, saw their names on a flight manifest, but actually seeing them was a real, affirming moment of “Oh, I know you! I managed your travel”.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE SOMEONE LOOKING TO BREAK INTO THE INDUSTRY?
My biggest piece of advice would be to go for it, even if you don’t have any previous experience. You can learn as you go, so long as you have a passion.
Follow sports teams on social media. If you’ve never heard of a sport before, research it – watch a match if you need to. Find out what they do and how it works. Getting a feel for a sport is the best starting point.
I think that you have to have an interest in travel, though. It’s not really a job that you can just decide to walk into on a whim. It helps if you have a bit of a travel bug and feel the industry suits you.
BEST PLACE YOU’VE TRAVELLED TO?
I went on a 6 night work trip to Las Vegas and New York, and that was amazing. That was around 15 years ago now. Vegas is completely bonkers (in a good way) and I was lucky enough to experience travelling business class on the flights, which I’d never done before.
ANY HIDDEN TALENTS OR HOBBIES?
I wouldn’t say I have any hidden talents. Most of my hobbies these days revolve around what my daughter does, not me! So, swimming and dance classes. I would say that travelling is my biggest hobby, though. My husband and I are thinking of going to Poland this Christmas, and we have travelled around Italy a lot. As a family, we try to do a city break and a sunny, beach holiday each year – just visiting new places.
FAVOURITE FOOD AND DRINK?
I’d have to say anything Mexican. We eat a lot of jalapenos in our house! Everything’s got to be spicy. My favourite drink is Aperol Spritz. I remember seeing it for the first time in Italy. These orange drinks just appeared, and I had to try one. Now they’re a big thing.