“This week, we marked the 11th birthday of Holiday Architects. Last year, our 10th birthday, was originally planned to be a big celebration of all we’d achieved in the preceding decade – growth, nice new offices, and of course many, many very happy clients with amazing holiday memories. Instead we found ourselves in a battle for survival, along with the rest of the travel industry, dealing with the complete shutdown of international travel, a scenario even the most pessimistic of industry leaders had never planned for. So, whilst we did put out a short note recognising our 10th birthday, I felt it wasn’t really appropriate to be popping champagne corks and breaking out the bunting.

A year on, and the picture is much brighter. I think we’ve all seen enough of Covid to know that I’d be foolish to say the travel industry is completely out of the woods yet. But, with the (long-overdue) simplification of travel regulations and the recognition that travel can be undertaken safely, announced last week, there is now a clear light at the end of the tunnel. For the first time since March 2020, I feel we can plan for the future with confidence again. As you’ll have seen in our updates recently,we’ve just had our first set of clients travel since the pandemic hit; I can’t tell you how good that feels. The team here have been incredible over the last 18 months, ensuring we’ve kept in touch with you and postponing holidays to ensure you have had something to look forward to when the situation improves. But, we’ve been unable to do what we all really love: working with you to design new holidays and getting you away on those fantastic trips to experience new cultures, visit new sites, relax in new environments, and build new memories. So we’re all thrilled to be doing that again, and it’s happy serendipity that it coincides with our birthday and the major easing of travel restrictions.

Celebrating “round” milestones (, 10th, 20th etc) is all fairly arbitrary – I think that based on our experience of the last two years, I’ll be celebrating 11th anniversaries and birthdays with much more vigour in the future. HA’s 11th birthday does feel like it marks the beginning of our recovery from the pandemic, and I think the next chapter, as we rebuild, will be as exciting and enjoyable as any period since I first opened the doors on 17th September 2010. I can’t wait to see where it takes us, and I’m delighted to have you – our wonderful clients – coming with us on the journey!”

Andy, HA Founder