We’re delighted that our Founder Helen Cannon has received the Spotlight Award at Advantage Travel Partnership’s Big Celebration Lunch. An honour which recognises her exceptional vision, leadership and contribution to the travel industry.
The judging panel said –
“Helen is Founder and CEO of ISON Travel which she launched in 2013 after nine years of raising a family of five children. Helen has built ISON Travel with the firm belief that, regardless of personal circumstances, every woman should have the opportunity to pursue a career in their chosen field. She built ISON Travel with the core objective to provide a flexible working environment allowing part time, remote work that suits an employee’s personal situation. Because of this, she has given opportunities to highly skilled people who may otherwise not have been employed in the travel industry. As a result, she has created an amazing, diverse team (over 70% are women). As a company, they raised over £14k for Cancer research following the loss of one of their team members.
During the pandemic rather than make redundancies, Helen took a risky decision to increase her investment in staff which led to a loss that year as she was confident that travel would return, and when it did she wanted to be ready with the best team. As a result, they reached and exceeded 2019 levels by 2021. They saw exponential growth in 2022 when staff levels, revenue and profit tripled 2021 levels, making them five times larger than pre-pandemic. Helen has driven huge growth for ISON, recently acquired both a US agency Global Excellence Inc and a UK agency in Screen and Music Travel, enabling them to diversify.”
For all of the team here at ISON, Helen Cannon’s Spotlight Award is a well-earned recognition of her purpose-led leadership. By prioritising her team and creating a supportive and inclusive workplace, Helen has transformed ISON Travel into what we believe is a powerhouse in the travel sector!
