About travel.co.uk

Just after we launched in July '08, MoneySavingExpert.com said Travel.co.uk 

"...has some funky features. Enter your travel details, and it searches all the eligible holidays and allows multi-destination searches if you're not sure where you want to go. It also plots prices on a graph, so you can see the cheapest day to travel. If you don't have a specific place in mind, leave the destination blank and it comes up with top deals."

E-Consultancy.com's Internet business publication website review said,

"The holiday search results are well displayed and users can easily compare different holidays.... with a wealth of information on the selected resorts, destination country and local places of interest, as well as valuable information on average temperatures,  local transport services and more", concluding, "Travel.co.uk is an easy to use travel site with some very useful search and comparison tools, and a good intuitive interface. It should prove to be a useful entrant into the travel comparison market." 
(15 July '08)

For more information, find out below what's great about the site and about the people behind the site.

Who are we?

The team behind travel.co.uk all have vast experience and knowledge of the travel industry, both online and offline, having worked for many years for tour operators, travel agencies, comparison websites, travel media and technology companies.

Leading the team as Managing Director is Ray Mason. Having cut his teeth in the competitive retail student travel market as Managing Director of Campus Travel where he developed a UK network of 50 branches during the 1990's, Ray went on to take charge of OctopusTravel.com and turn it into one of the early global successes in online discount hotel websites. After OctopusTravel was sold to the Cendant Corporation in 2005, Ray worked for a period as a consultant and Head of Virgin Holidays’ Ecommerce division before undertaking the Managing Directorship of Teletext Holidays online. Upon leaving Teletext, Ray developed the concept of travel.co.uk and has been responsible for setting up and launching this new and innovative business.

The vital role of Head of Customer Experience is held by Mike Ramsden who has a broad range of sales, operations business and technical development experience working for leading names in the travel, logistics and retail industries. It was as Programme Manager for Thomas Cook Interactive (now ThomasCook.com) that Mike first got into travel, looking after the design and development of their websites and associated customer service capabilities. He next took his skills into being responsible for ecommerce product development and delivery for Comtec, a leading software provider to the UK leisure travel sector, where he expanded product ranges and services for its big-name travel industry clients. It was while working at Comtec that Mike met Ray and became involved in development of the travel.co.uk proposition.

The third key member of our management team is our Marketing Manager, Vicky Smith who has worked in the online travel industry for most of her career. Vicky started at the customer facing end of tour operations, as a resort manager and in sales & marketing for Crystal Holidays. A spell as an international conference organiser focusing on internet technologies for First Conferences and the ‘EyeFor’ brand got her into ecommerce and web marketing, which in turn led to her working as Product Development Manager for ski and holidays in the team that set up the Teletext Holidays website. Moving client-side, Vicky then worked in ecommerce marketing at Virgin Holidays, where she worked with Ray, followed by a role managing the online presence and communications for specialist volunteer travel tour operator, Different Travel.

Ownership

The management team at travel.co.uk is backed and supported by a number of private investors each of whom has many years' experience of building and developing businesses within the travel industry sector. Together they form Travel.co.uk Ltd.

About the site

Travel.co.uk was launched in June 2008 and was born out of the desire to dramatically improve the online searching, comparing and booking experience for holidays, and to challenge the limitations of existing travel websites. In achieving this, travel.co.uk makes finding your ideal holiday a much quicker and more enjoyable experience and takes travel comparison shopping to a new level.

Why travel.co.uk is great for finding and booking holidays

1. Easy to search and find holidays …

At travel.co.uk, we don’t want to make finding and booking a holiday such hard work!

Travel.co.uk’s aim is to try and make the online shopping experience easier and quicker for you by bringing all the information that you require to make your decision into just one website.

We have designed all sorts of useful and time saving tools to make your life easier.

• The price you see is the price you'll pay. The first price that we show you in the results will be the price that is stored in our system and we tell you when this was last updated. When you click on Continue to view the full details we will check the current, live availability and carry out a detailed price check in the tour operator's reservations system, including checking for any child discounts and any other options that may be available. So the price we display is the price that you can pay. This means that there will be no unpleasant surprises when you come to book.   

• If you’re not sure what date you want to depart, instead of making you search multiple times for multiple dates to find the best deal, if you tell us that your dates are flexible we’ll display your results on a Calendar View and show you the availability and price for 2 weeks either side of your selected date. This way you can not only see what days you can start your holiday, but you can clearly see the cheapest day to depart - if that’s what you want.

• If you don’t know where you want to go, let us give you some ideas. You can use our route finder to search one, all or multiple (such as The Canaries and Greek Islands at once) destinations, or choose to search by your preferred flying time or by the expected temperature in your destination!

• If you know where you want to go but you’re not sure where you need to leave from, we’ll tell you your options. This should prevent you wasting your time searching for holidays departing from an airport which does not match your destination simply because the airlines do not fly that particular route.

• You can also fine tune your search to only look for certain star ratings, get results for only specific board basis and set limits on the price per person you want to pay.

Of course, if you do know where you want to go, then you can go ahead and just type it into the search box – and if you are not sure how to spell it, we will even help you out there too.

2. Easy to see what you’ll be getting…

Our search results and holiday details include loads of information to help you decide which holiday is right for you.

• You can view your results in a number of ways. If you’ve searched with flexible dates, you will receive your results in the Calendar View so that you can see what is available 2 weeks either side of the date selected. Then you can either click on the List View tab to see the results in price order with basic holiday information and a picture, or click on a specific date to fine tune your search and obtain results just for that date.

• Want to see the travel provider’s full official description, photos and video? You don’t have to look it up in a brochure or go to another site to find it. Just clicking the holiday will give you more the more detailed Holiday Info screen where you can find full holiday descriptions, more photos and even video where available. At this stage we also check the live availability of the holiday and check the latest pricing.

• Want to know what other people thought? Instead of going off to search independent review sites for the hotel or holiday you’re considering, you don’t have to as we have arranged to display the latest Trip Advisor™ reviews on the page for thousands of the most popular holiday hotels

• Want to choose different flying times or room options? If there are any options to book different flights or different room types for the holiday, we show these along with and relevant any price supplements on the Options tab, so you can customise your holiday to meet your personal needs.

• Want to see on a map where you’ll be going? Rather than visiting a separate map site for the destination you’re thinking of going to, we are introducing Google maps into our destination information. See them on the Destination Info tab or in the Destinations section travel guides.

• Want to see what the weather will be like? On the Destination guides’ Map tab you can also see average daily sunshine, minimum and maximum temperatures and rainfall graphical information.

And that’s on top of all the usual destination guide info and holiday ideas from us too!

3. Easy to compare, and prioritise your favourites …

• Save holidays to your shortlist from the search results or holiday details screens and you can come back to them another time, or even another day.

• Drag and drop them to arrange your shortlist and put the holidays into your own priority order.

• Compare your shortlist deals side by side in a table – comparing not only prices but your other holiday options such as departure dates, durations, star ratings, board basis, temperatures and rainfall, and even flight options.

 

4. Easy and safe to book…

Once you’ve found the holiday you want to book, not only can you do it right here on travel.co.uk, we even give you a choice of agents to buy from along with the price that they are offering your chosen holiday for. And because it is not always just about price, we also provide you with a profile of each agent to help you choose who to book with. We aim to offer you at least 3 options for every holiday and these may include the tour operator themselves, independent agents, and even a personal home-based travel agent in your local area. Some only offer online bookings while others can provide an even more personal service by offering a telephone booking service.

For consumer protection, we ensure all our suppliers are covered by ABTA and/or ATOL travel industry bonding, so you won’t be left out in the cold if things go wrong. With the addition of Verisign security on our online bookings and payments, we’ve got you well looked after.

5. That’s just for starters, as this is the first phase of our launch!

Developing a site is an ongoing process. There are always things to add, fix and improve. Not only will we be fine-tuning and tweaking as we go but we’ve got loads of extra enhancements and really useful tools under development to make it even easier for you to search, find and book holidays.

If you register with us, well make sure you’re among the first to know about them. You can register via the link on the top right hand side of this page.

And if you’d like to give us your feedback, tell us about a glitch you found, suggest anything you’d like to see on the site or even tell us what you particularly like at the moment, please do contact us! We’d love to hear your ideas and will try to incorporate the most popular ideas into travel.co.uk in the future.

What's coming next?

For our initial launch, we have focused on package holidays. Next up, we’re going to be including:

• Flight and hotel bundles from low cost carriers and discount hotel providers. This means you won’t have to search all the low cost carrier sites and hotel sites separately; You won’t have to flick between multiple sites comparing package holidays and flight + hotel alternatives; You won’t need to worry about booking the hotel and then finding our that the flight has sold out in the meantime; You will no longer have the hassle and your time taken up with multiple searches and booking processes and won’t be concerned about consumer protection. What you will have is one easy search - our results will integrate package holidays and flight + hotel bundles so you can easily find the best deal for you. You’ll have one easy booking process, even if you select a bundle, and your booking will be covered by one of our bonded travel agents.

• Searches that plot your results onto a map, providing you with inspiration and yet another way of selecting your ideal holiday.

• Improved and enhanced calendar view screens

• Additional comparison tools for search results to help you find the holiday that meets your needs.

• Ability to search and book just flights or just hotels

Of course, it may take us a little while to deliver all this and the new developments will not all arrive at the same time, but  register with us and you will be among the first to know when they go live. You can find the registration link on the top right hand side of this page.

You are not currently signed in.

Sign in

If you register with travel.co.uk you can save your shortlists, set up search preferences and more...

View your holiday shortlist in a comparison table

You can be confident when booking with travel.co.uk:

• 
•