Hamm Magazine

Travel 2 Meet Hamm Magazin

Article in the October Issue of Hamm Magazine

The job of one’s dream

“When I grow up, I want to work with hotels.” As a six-year-old, Sarah Wirtz flew with her parents to Spain, since then she is thrilled with the travel industry. The dream did not let her go. Today, the 34-year-old is the owner of the still young agency for business travel “Travel 2 Meet”, based in Hamm. Sarah Wirtz consistently made her way to her goal: college entrance qualification, training as a foreign language correspondent, study of international business administration in Bochum (Germany), degree as “Master of Science in International Tourism Management” in Great Britain. In addition to the theory, she has already gained extensive practical experience in travel agencies and international hotels. And she also had some practical experience as a tourist: “So I was in Barcelona in one single month, then in the Maldives and finally in New York City, sat on the plane for 45 hours.”

Hotel Specialist

Sarah Wirtz started her professional career in 2008 with the online reservation system hotel.de / hotel.info (“that’s how I came to Hamm”). She specializes in the so-called MICE area (MICE stands for Meeting Incentive Congress Event), negotiated contracts with renowned hotels and global hotel chains. And she represented the company at tourism trade fairs in Germany, Europe and the USA. “So I was able to get to know countless hotels in Germany and abroad and build up a large network in the industry,” the manager likes to think back. “That was a great time in a motivated team, unfortunately hotel.de was sold four years ago and the office in Hamm was closed.” However, she decided not to move to Cologne for the new employer HRS. The now mother of two joined the Caritas Executive Board as Assistant to the Executive Board. “An interesting position, but in my mind there was more and more the idea of ​​taking the step into self-employment,” says Sarah Wirtz, “for sure it would be something in tourism.” The Economic Development of Hamm supported her plans, a business plan was created. The result: the founding of the agency “Travel 2 Meet”.

Service free of charge

In particular, her agency organizes meetings and conferences of different sizes: from 30 participants (for example, two days in a hotel with all the details) up to 500 people (as a giant event with a complete program). And the best thing for the organizers: “Our service is absolutely free of charge”, guarantees Sarah Wirtz, “the hotels pay a commission, through which we finance ourselves. The volume of our inquiries means that the customer always gets the best price from the hotels. “” We are completely independent in the choice of hotels, “assures Sarah Wirtz. “This is only the decision of our client.” But if she is asked for a tip, she is happy to recommend hotels, the quality of which she has personally convinced herself: “Therefore, I am always on the road to test new hotels – im October, for example, in Hamburg. ”

Source: Hamm Magazine. October 2018. Publisher: Verkehrsverein Hamm. Photo: Huebner