Following a year of travel disruption and changing market conditions, Travel Bulletin caught up with Jetset’s business development manager, Karen Milward, to discuss how the company has navigated the impact in the Middle East, the enduring success of its agent initiatives, and what’s next for ever-evolving JETS platform
How has 2026 shaped up for you thus far? Has the Middle East conflict has an impact on your service standards?
It’s sadly a tale of what could have been. Boosted by the constant developments around technology, processes and incentives, we raced into a terrific position through January and February and then we all woke upon that Saturday morning! Emirates are our largest airline in revenue terms and the other two major carriers also carry significant volumes of our passengers in to the Middle East and beyond…as you can imagine we were busy and I deliberately stayed out of the call centre in those early days! However, the team worked amazingly well and the cross training that had been ramped up in the last 12 months paid massive dividends. Within seven-eight days the call centre were back delivering a service performance, not too far away from their usual award winning levels. I think Jetset also showed how we are here to help our trade partners with the Refund pledge that went beyond the PTR requirement on a package and saw us delivering Flight Only refunds within 14 days too!
Your popular Lotto incentive is back! Does it remain a popular choice with agents even after 20 years?
OK, its not actually back because it never went away, but what is amazing about it is that we keep pushing the boundaries and in June we launched World Cup Wipeout with each week one jackpot of £966 which is paying homage to a certain footballing feat! Agents get Lotto tickets for every booking and can keep check of the current Lotto campaign and their lotto tickets in Incentive Manager in the JETS Toolbox.
What other incentives/developments can agents get excited about?
I did say our trading had been boosted by a few things and incentives are a key reason. Highfliers was launched before I joined Jetset and initially this was just SpintoWin which I did think was excellent with instant rewards on EVERY Flight Only booking but packages were still being left unloved! All that changed on July 4th, 2025 when we launched Magnificent 7, I took on the Alter Ego of Marshall Milward and Jetset started to reward agents with the most generous, flexible and immediate incentive programme in the trade. Each month there is even a BONUS TIER that pays out even more than the standard Mag7 payouts… next month Marchall Milward, Sherriff Smyth, Kwik Fire Katus and Marshall Molyneux will be promoting Texas as the Bonus Tier destination with a minimum payout of £175 for any package involving Texas.
Any plans on the horizon that we can get a sneak preview of?
Well don’t tell anyone but we have tons happening! Jetset now have six dedicated Jetset developers and we have to keep them busy! The big news is that very soon we will be detailing how the appeal of Magnificent 7 will see us galloping past all other trade incentives. We also have more villa product about to hit HomefromHome and finally, given how Eurostar is so successful for Jetset, keep your eyes peeled to see if anything else turns up on the JETS platform.
