15 years of HA

To mark our 15th birthday, Andy has shared a personal message looking back on the journey so far. There have been highs, there have been challenges, but above all, there have been plenty of adventures and incredible people shaping them. Below, you’ll also find a timeline graphic and a year-by-year snapshot of how HA has grown.

In September 2010, I opened the doors of Holiday Architects to the world: by which I mean I was sitting on my own in my spare bedroom in Witney, pressed “Go” to launch the South Africa Holiday Architects website, and asked Google to start advertising it. At that time, David Cameron had only been Prime Minister for five months, as the leader of the Conservative / Liberal Democrats coalition. London hadn’t yet hosted the Olympics, I had only been married a year and had no kids (just two cats), and most people thought Corona was a kind of beer.Now I live in Cheltenham with my wife, two children and a dog, the political landscape is incredibly different, English women’s sports teams are dominating the world, and Holiday Architects has grown hugely. Today, we’re selling roughly 20 times more destinations than 2010 with roughly 20 times as many staff, sending away well over ten times as many people on holiday each year. (Although, paradoxically, the rise in hybrid/remote working means I do still spend a lot of my time working from my spare bedroom these days). In summary, fifteen years is a lifetime (literally for my kids!).It’s a lot to reflect on, but what stands out most in my mind is the people I’ve worked with. My daughter asked me the other day who Holiday Architects’ first client was, and I was able to remember her name, and where she went. Back then I couldn’t sell flights as I didn’t have an ATOL licence, and travel was (and remains) a very competitive landscape: so I was always hugely grateful, and a little surprised, when someone was prepared to entrust their precious holiday to me. If you are one of those early clients, thank you so much for that trust, because without you I’d have to have shut the doors after only a few weeks.I’m hugely proud of the staff who have worked here over the years, some of whom left much bigger, well-known companies to come and work for a little start-up with a tiny office in Cheltenham. Some of those who’ve been through our doors have gone on to have impressive careers, and I’m always genuinely thrilled to see any HA alumni making waves. The team we have now are a remarkable bunch. I’ve never worked with a group of people so committed to setting and fiercely protecting their own high standards. The pride they have in what we do here at HA comes through in their conversations with you, our clients, and much like me back in the early days, we never take your custom for granted and are always thrilled when you choose to book with us.I’m also really proud of how we came through Covid. At times it would have been very easy to give up, but the team at HA worked so hard, and you were so loyal to us, and those two things saw us through and in a strange way laid the platform for all the good things we’ve done since then. As a company, we’re loving our jobs and colleagues more than ever, we have a shiny new website, some new destinations on the horizon to launch, we should be about to get our B-Corp certification (fingers crossed!) and we’re continuing to take huge pleasure in finding more ways to surprise and delight you (the best bit of the job!).If I think back to those early days, I’m amazed at how far we’ve come, and I know there’s so much more we’re going to achieve, so I don’t want to inject any sadness into proceedings. But, it would be remiss of me not to mark the recent passing of Craig Smith. Craig was a friend of mine for 20+ years, and the original investor in HA; he ran his own, extremely successful, travel business in South Africa, and had achieved that success by being kind, respectful, empathetic, and having lots of fun along the way. That’s the template for how we operate at HA, and I know he was as proud as anyone of what we’ve achieved. I’m going to miss him like hell, but HA will continue to be kind, respectful, empathetic, and have lots of fun, because I know he’d approve!Andy, HA Founder