30 Oct 2023
UK HOLIDAYMAKERS' WEIRD AND WONDERFUL TRAVEL REQUESTS REVEALED
New insights from Travel Counsellors show Brits are putting their bucket list items at the heart of their travel adventures
30 October 2023, Manchester: Forget Ocean views and room upgrades - Travel Counsellors, one of the UK's largest and fastest-growing travel companies - has revealed the weird and wonderful requests they've encountered from UK holidaymakers.
More than 1,900 individual Travel Counsellors who create bespoke travel experiences for their customers took part in the research.
The findings highlight the growing desire for highly personalised and unique travel experiences, and the increased need for resourceful, imaginative and trusted travel advisors that are dedicated to curating the ultimate, memorable holiday experience.
The most unusual holidaymaker requests received by Travel Counsellors include:
- A mermaid to deliver floating breakfast in the hotel pool - mermaid
- Dressing up as Super Mario for a go-kart tour of Tokyo
- Having lunch with an astronaut at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida
- Visiting a morgue in Los Angeles
- Seeing the Komodo dragon, the world's largest lizard, on Komodo island, Indonesia
- Staying on a wild west ranch in Texas
- Scattering ashes over a famous shipwreck
- Re-creating a honeymoon in Italy from 50 years ago
- Sharing breakfasts with giraffes at Giraffe Manor, Kenya
- Shark cage diving in South Africa
In addition, Travel Counsellor, Pete Whitehead, based in Bury, recently booked the travel for a long-standing customer who was travelling to join the crew onboard Virgin Galactic's recent first space tourism flight, taking holiday experiences to a level that is truly out of this world.
Kirsten Hughes, UK Managing Director and Chief Commercial Officer at Travel Counsellors commented:
“Our findings show that this trend for booking extraordinary experiences is something we're seeing universally. Holidaymakers on every budget are looking to align their trips with their personal interests and bucket list items - whatever they might be. It's exciting for our Travel Counsellors, using our digitally enabled platform and the power of our global community, to be able to deliver an exceptional, personalised level of customer service and find innovative ways to help customers live their travel dreams. Travelling and making lifelong memories is priceless and where we can help facilitate that for our customers, we absolutely will.”
-ENDS-
About Travel Counsellors
Travel Counsellors is the UK's largest and fastest-growing technology platform for travel entrepreneurs that connects over 1,900 independent business owners, ultimately enabling them to deliver exceptional levels of customer service. In the year to 31 October 2022, Total Transaction Value (“TTV”) on the platform was more than £700m, up more than 300% against the prior year.
Travel Counsellors operates across six countries (UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa and the UAE) and employs 300 people in its UK headquarters and overseas offices. The Company provides a high touch, digitally enabled platform, that enables and empowers business owners to harness innovative and constantly evolving tools and technology to build their businesses in a way that suits them, with limitless potential and scale. This is underpinned by the knowledge and power of a global community and strong people first culture.
The company operates its own ATOL supported financial trust which safeguards customers from any failure of a travel supplier involved in their booking.
Travel Counsellors is multi-award winning and has a five star, 'Excellent' rating on Trustpilot. It was founded in 1994.
For further information about Travel Counsellors, please visit www.travelcounsellors.co.uk/
