About Me

I started travelling straight after leaving education, saving up for a year then heading off to New Zealand for the first time. After getting the bug, working in travel seemed to make sense and that’s where I started off.

I have worked for Carnival UK at their offices in Southampton in the past and have also worked in luxury tailor made and student travel as well as working in camper van rentals. This makes up all in all about 12 years work history in the travel industry!

The photos above show me in some of the places I’ve been to, in order left to right – 1: Dubrovnik 2: The Parthenon, Athens 3: Ile des Pins, New Caledonia, 4: The Remarkables Queenstown NZ (after a heli drop) 5: My beach hut, Moorea, Tahiti, 6: The Great wall of China, albeit not with me in but is my photo, which I’m quite proud of!

I have lived in and around Southampton most of my life so am used to seeing (and hearing!) cruise ships coming and going. I remember doing my driving lessons and two of the Cunard Queens were coming and going simultaneously into Southampton whilst I was practicing my parking in Town Quay! Part of my background is tailor made long-haul travel so I specialise in the weird and wonderful and putting together bespoke packages in far flung places and I consider myself an expert on the Far East and Australia and New Zealand.

This means I enjoy those sort of cruise enquiries because I can point people in the direction of things they wouldn’t necessarily consider with those sorts of packages!

One of my many ship visits, MSC Preziosa

Between 2010 and 2015 I moved with my wife out to Christchurch, New Zealand with my wife Andrea who is of NZ Maori origin and had a crack at settling out there but ultimately hampered by constant earthquakes in  the Christchurch area.

We picked up my pet greyhound Marko Polo along the way, a grand traveler himself, he started as a racing dog in Australia. He then moved to carry this on in NZ where we got him after he had a slight injury and we have had him for six years now. He traveled back to the UK by Emirates with a 24 hour stopover in Dubai. It’s all travel, travel, travel for some!

Glass of Champagne, check. Ayers Rock in background, check!

2012 was marked by the birth of my son Sean who is now 5 years old, “very 5” as he puts it! He has been to a lot of places with us, not many five year olds can say they have been to Shanghai, Tahiti and Tokyo! Ultimately now we have him in our life it means we are a little less adventurous in how we do things travel wise, backpacking in South East Asia is a no no at the moment. Even the most ordinary trips away have a different dimension now he is around and he is a constant source of fun.

I love travel in every way, selling it, talking about it and doing it, I couldn’t honestly see myself doing anything else as a career. It’s hard to think of another job where you create such special memories for people, not just once but multiple times more often than not. The best thing is when people keep coming back as that shows you are doing something right!