What a month!

We've just celebrated our best ever month at Travel Counsellors Ireland since we launched in September 2005. 29 of our 52 Travel Counsellors also had their own personal best ever month (sales and earnings). And if that wasn't enough, we've had a 22% increase overall compared to our previous best ever in January 2013. What a start!

We are expanding and growing and that is reflected in the air of positivity in this country of ours. It's a feeling that the nation hasn't experienced in a very long time and it is infectious.

It's not just us though, Travel Counsellors around the world in the UK, Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Canada and UAE had record sales in January too.

Our sales were buoyed by a major sales incentive with more than 1,250 Travel Counsellors from our global network participating to win a trip to St. Lucia. The TC Treasures of the Caribbean incentive was in partnership with Virgin Atlantic, Sandals, Harlequin Hotels and Resorts. The challenge was played out through our intranet system and saw 32 global teams compete in multiple challenges each day over the four week period. I'm delighted to say that three Irish Travel Counsellors were on the winning team; Richard Harbourne, Sinead Daly and Donna Olohan.

We also had three further Irish winners in a competition of the top sellers of our directly contracted hotels in our in-house dynamic packaging system Phenix. The prize here is a Travel Counsellor exclusive trip to Vietnam departing in March. Sarah McCarthy, Mary Foyle and Mandy Walsh were the top winners from Ireland.

Incredibly 12 of our Travel Counsellors did personal sales of over €100,000 each during January while the top two Irish Travel Counsellors sold in excess of €200,000.

We are so proud of our brilliant team.