Fi Morrison-Arnthal

Fi Morrison-Arnthal is the founder and Managing Director of Ambitions Travel Recruitment, bringing over 35 years of experience across the leisure travel industry as a qualified, award-winning training and recruitment specialist.

Her career spans over three decades of senior leadership across the leisure travel industry, from Branch Manager to Regional Sales Manager and Head of Training and Development.

Fi moved overseas in 2004 and enjoyed growing the luxury tour operator Go2Africa as Head of Sales and Organisation Development, exceeding all targets consecutively for several years before moving to Pentravel, where she led National Sales for the multiple-branch retail leisure travel specialists. Once again, she exceeded annual profit targets.

She later co-founded a specialist travel communications and recruitment consultancy, Big Ambitions, in Cape Town before returning to the UK to become the highest-performing recruiter at Progressive Travel Recruitment globally, before founding Ambitions Travel Recruitment in 2022.

Fi's achievements in leisure travel are extensive. Awards include Shop of the Year, Highest Revenue Increase of the Year, and 100% Mystery Shopper scores, recognition that reflects the commercial rigour and service standards she brings to everything she does. She has received two national training awards from Travel Weekly and Travel Trade Gazette, and Global Business Awards for her contribution to recruiting within the travel industry. That breadth of sales excellence, training expertise, and recruitment performance gives Fi an understanding of leisure travel businesses that few, if any, travel recruiters can match.

For over a decade, Fi has focused exclusively on specialist recruitment within leisure travel, placing talent across safari and expedition travel, tailor-made tour operators, ocean and river cruise lines, UHNW and HNW concierge travel, ski, and high-net-worth experiential travel.

Her specialism is headhunting passive candidates, senior leisure travel professionals who are not actively seeking a new role but who are open to the right conversation. This approach, combined with one of the most established networks in the sector, means the right people are already known to Fi before a vacancy is briefed.

Roles placed span the full seniority range and include SVP, Director, NDA-sensitive appointments, and positions across Marketing, Product, Finance, HR, and consultant level. Clients range from established global luxury travel brands and independent specialist operators to high-growth start-ups, across the UK, South Africa, GCC, Asia, and North America.

Fi also collaborates with a group of travel industry experts to design and author a library of free soft skills eLearning courses through Ambitions Travel Training. Her conviction is straightforward: product and destination knowledge is essential, but it is incomplete without the professional skills that define a successful leisure travel career. The courses are available to the global travel industry, free of charge.

Outside of work, Fi is a wife to Roo and mother to Kai, Luke, Will, and Lottie. She shares her home office with George, a rescue Ragdoll cat who takes his supervisory role seriously.