Travel Fanatics Who Started Their Own Vacation Business

It sounds like a serious traveler's dream, starting your own holiday business, not tied to a single supplier to ensure a wider range of offers, with prices 25% to 40% cheaper than anywhere else .

That dream came true for travel enthusiasts Brett Norton and Stephen Knight when they launched their travel startup, Ultimate Travel Club, during lockdown. Both men are also travel industry veterans and used their combined knowledge and experience in business strategy and marketing for travel, leisure and hospitality companies to develop their concept. p>

Norton CEO Says: "We're both travelers first and foremost, and as travelers we want greater flexibility, more choice and true fairness. But we're also all in the industry of travel, so we know that traditional companies are not designed to offer all this at a reasonable price, which is why we decided to create our own travel agency."

Central to Ultimate Travel Club is its subscription model, charging members an annual fee of £99 ($120). The company's revenue comes from subscription fees rather than what members buy through the site, including vacations, cruises, flights, or car rentals.

As Norton explains, traditional travel agencies are built around legacy infrastructure and high overhead, which adds additional costs that are passed on to the customer.

“Our business was specifically designed to offer flexible travel at the best prices, says Norton. % cheaper than other providers. Last week our online price comparison tool showed that 91% of searches were cheaper with us than with other holiday providers."

Ultimate Travel Club launched in late 2021. The founders used feedback from their early members to refine the customer journey. They invested in the platform by opening up free access to search for everyone online and developed a price comparison widget before launching an official marketing campaign.

While most members research and book online, using a members-only app, the company also has UK-based travel experts to answer questions and make tailor-made telephone reservations. Alongside the consumer proposal, the company has developed proposals for business travel, partnership and social benefits

Launching a travel business during the pandemic was always going to be difficult, with frequent changes in travel rules and the founders not being able to physically meet as a team as they prepared to launch the business .

"Regular check-ins have kept us aligned, and while we're still cloud-based, our customer experience staff work in shared offices that suit them," says Norton. “We meet daily online and physically in London every month. We have made the virtual a virtue."

The startup secured a seed investment of £250,000 from several angel investors, while the rest of the funding came from several founding members and the directors themselves.

Membership is currently doubling every month, and to date these members have collectively realized savings of over £1.6 million ($2 million). "In two years, we'd be disappointed if we hadn't captured over 150,000 active members," says Norton.

The company employs 10 people and expects an annual turnover of £5m by the end of 2023. "The forecast is modest and realistic," says Norton. “We are looking for sustainable growth and all of our revenues are reinvested in technology development and marketing. We have an addressable market of 6.7 million people in the UK alone."

The founders are in talks with several well-known brands looking to partner with Ultimate Travel Club across various industries and channels. Norton expects the B2B aspect of its proposition to grow faster than the company's direct-to-consumer element.

He says, "We've received great feedback on how the proposal works for individuals, businesses of all sizes looking for freebies or great ways to reward, retain and attract talent, and SMBs who want to save on travel for their staff In the future, UTC 2.0 will allow us to create hyper-personalization using machine learning and AI to understand and deliver content based on tastes and individual travel needs; that's when it gets really exciting."

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