Maggie Bootsman has independent travel company Travel Counsellors to thank for hiring her after facing years of age discrimination when trying to job-hunt in the UAE in her fifties.
The 60-year-old Australian moved to Dubai in 2013, following her husband, who had relocated for a shipping job three years previously. Yet despite having held senior positions in the airline, travel and hospitality sectors, from American Express to Qantas, she struggled to find work.
“I had never felt that there was a glass ceiling as far as my career path was concerned,” says Ms Bootsman, who has one son, aged 25, living back in Adelaide. “I thought my qualifications would allow me to obtain a job quite easily, but people saw my experience and knew I was over 50. I was quite old to be taken on board by a business in the UAE.
“It’s not that doors started closing but I was told I was too experienced, that ‘we don’t feel we can offer you a challenging enough role to retain you’.”
Expatriates in the UAE can only apply for employment-related residency visas until they are 65 years old; this was increased from 60 in 2011 but only allows for a 12-month renewable visa. In some specific cases, the age limit can be extended further.
Getting creative, she took a course with Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing and set up her own business, Maggie’s Bespoke Tours of Dubai. It proved “very, very lucrative”, making her Dh20,000 a month working part-time.
But then in 2017, she spotted the vacancy at Travel Counsellors. “When I saw the UAE general manager position advertised, I started to think that I really wanted to finish my career on a high note,” she says. “When I applied for the role, age was not even a consideration.
“It was my experience and knowledge and what I could bring to the table for business here that they looked at. I might be 60 but I still have a good business head on my shoulders and I’m good at building relationships.” Ms Bootsman got the job, subsequently hiring two friends to manage her own tour company.
Travel Counsellors is a word-of-mouth holiday booking firm, which hires self-employed travel agents and bypasses advertising in favour of the agents finding their own client base, generally of repeat business and referrals.
The firm was born in the UK more than two decades ago and now has 1,700 agents working in countries as diverse as South Africa, Australia and the Netherlands, making £600 million (Dh2.77 billion) in turnover last year, Dh37 million in the UAE alone. It launched in the UAE in 2012 as a joint venture with Dnata, part of the Emirates Group, and has 62 travel counsellors in the Emirates.
New agents are charged an upfront fee of Dh3,500-23,000, based on their level of travel experience. Once they have become paid-up ‘TCs’, the home-based agents are given a laptop, printer, training, access to support staff, and a visa or work permit is organised by Travel Counsellors. They earn a 60 per cent commission on any holidays they sell.
Some TCs worldwide can earn more than a company CEO, says Ms Bootsman - up to £200,000 (Dh922,594) a year. In the UAE, an average TC can expect to earn Dh10-15,000 per month, depending on how much they work – but there is no limit to what they could earn.
The 24/7, end-to-end service Travel Counsellors offers is, Ms Bootsman says, perfect for the demands of the UAE market. A large Emirati family might suddenly want to take a Swiss trip in a week’s time, she says, or a resident might decide on a Thursday to go to Baku for the weekend or to splash out Dh20,000 for a luxury staycation. “The trend is short, frequent and with a very, very short lead-in time,” she says.
Top destinations are very different to those for Europe, she says, with hotspots including Oman, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, the Seychelles, South Africa, Croatia and Azerbaijan. Winter cruises around the Gulf are also growing in popularity.
Halal tourism, too, is a growth market - the fastest growing sector in the world, Ms Bootsman says. Muslim travellers spent $151 billion on travel in 2015, according to a Thomson Reuters and DinarStandard report - 11 per cent of the $1.3 trillion global tourism market and second only to Chinese travellers. Muslim expenditure was highest in the GCC, at $54 billion.
The region is ramping up to Expo 2020, with the number of travellers stopping off in Dubai expected to grow from 10 million to 25 million in the next three years.
Ms Bootsman says she will definitely be staying put until after the Expo and perhaps until 2025. She will retire when she finally returns home to Australia. But, she says, for now the world is her oyster, having just enjoyed a three-week trip around the Greek islands, with a three-week trip to England - the Cotswolds, Devon and Cornwall - earlier in the summer. She is planning trips to Jordan, Spain and Portugal next year.
“I consider myself very blessed to have chosen the travel industry as my career,” says Ms Bootsman. “It has been quite a bizarre shift, from senior manager to lowly tour guide to general manager of Travel Counsellors UAE.
“It just goes to show - never feel there’s not another opportunity for you. Think outside the box. Frankly, age should have no relevance.”