Bonus: How we turned start-up Heidi into one of the biggest ski holiday firms

0:02Simon Lambert: Welcome to the This Is Money podcast. I'm Simon Lambert and you're listening to a special bonus episode of the podcast where I'm joined by Alexander and Marcus Blunt, the brothers behind the ski package holiday Heidi. now you may have been watching the winter olympics on the television you may have been looking at those snow-covered mountains and those blue skies and thinking that it sounds and looks quite a lot better than gray and rainy britain i know i have but regular listeners to the podcast will know that it doesn't take much to get me thinking about going snowboarding however if some of those people do decide to go away there's a fair chance that some of them will be going with heidi because Alexander and Marcus have built what is Britain's second biggest ski package holiday firm and it was only founded in 2018.

0:54Simon Lambert: So seeing as the Winter Olympics were on we thought it'd be a good time to speak to them and find out a little bit more about how they built the business, how they turned their idea into reality and what they learned along the way. Welcome to the podcast both of you thank you very much for joining us. Marcus first why don't you tell us about the idea behind Heidi How did it come about?

1:15Marcus Blunt: Yeah. Hi, Simon. Thank you. It's something which I think has been niggling away at both of us for a long time. I think, you see, we've always been mad about what we do. We grew up in the north of Scotland in a little cottage on a snowy hillside. Well, it's not snowy all the time, but it's snowy for a fair chunk of the time. And with a Norwegian mum who is sort of proudly Norwegian and passionate about all things being outside in the snow. and so we've always been so kind of obsessed with some skiing and snow since an early age and i think that was only sort of cemented when we moved to norway as teenagers and got to sort ski loads there and it just became sort of part of life and then we sort of moved back to the uk and started work and and started sort of organizing our own ski trips having come from a place where it was so easy you know living in norway you could just get on the bus and go skiing at your local slope for example so then it being this enormous logistical challenge to solve became on one side kind of frustrating on the second side kind of enjoyable for me because i'm a total nerd but we ended up sort of pouring loads of energy and trying to figure out what the right trip for us was you see we were busy with kids jobs we couldn't go away for a week you know the typical sort of saturday saturday holiday that the market was offering so we happened to doing it doing ourselves and so this is one holiday in particular where my spreadsheet was excellent but also kind of out of control and sort of dawned on me that it was completely ridiculous that there wasn't technology that existed in order to make this super easy that's where the idea came from so it was that one trip in particular uh uh where i was organizing it for a holiday there were four of us going away to austria and we're comparing all the different flights and accommodation and transfer options and ski pass prices and and transfer times and these things to get the perfect holiday and it it was all very sort of logic driven and I figured that's what technology could do well so that's kind of where the idea came from initially.

3:04Simon Lambert: In terms of those kind of putting together a trip difficulties what you know were you doing in terms of thinking okay what period of time can we go over where can we go you know that kind of thing how complicated was it for you to do because how do you how do you then put all of that yeah into an engine that comes up with it yeah gonna get insight

3:30Marcus Blunt: into my nerdy list now but at this point we knew we wanted to go to austria i think if i think think back to this one holiday we knew we wanted to go to austria we're living in london at the time so pulled together a spreadsheet where i sort of chucked in all the different flight numbers into you know munich and salzburg and innsbruck also compared all the transfer times to all the different resorts and scored all the resorts based on certain things that we're going to be interested in the quality of the app rate the likelihood of there being fresh snow etc you know the lift pass prices so we could then work out what the sort of thing the cost per ski hour could be and the the amount of skiing per annual day used for example and it's generally generated this bunch of sort of nerdy metrics in order sort of you know the bespectacled me could say aha this is the holiday for us but in there were just rows and rows of flight data of transfer data different accommodation options and so on and so forth and of course i mean i did this all by hand so it took you know it took vast amounts of time that i probably should have spent doing other things you know the upside was we actually got a really good trip it was fantastic brilliant absolutely banging holiday and so i was feeling really really quite pleased with my spreadsheet but probably not so pleased the amount of time i poured into it and just felt that yes look technology can do this we can we can figure out how to connect that inventory and build a sort of a packaging engine and price comparison engine that way without the need for manually inputting all these different options into a spreadsheet.

4:51Simon Lambert: Alexander, what were you both doing at the time in terms of jobs and work? You were presumably both working full-time.

4:58Alexander Blunt: Both working full-time. Both had two very young kids. Both had kids born in 2018, the year the company was founded as well. But we were in the travel

5:05Marcus Blunt: sector.

5:05Alexander Blunt: And so we had that context. And I think that sort of shone a light with how crazy this problem was, is that we were passionate skiers and we were in the travel industry. And even we were finding it a complete pain to book these holidays so there had to be another way and i think sort of marx was coming at it so marx is very technical complete geek and it was coming at it from that angle when he was sort of explaining the problem to me so the way i saw it was that skiers don't search where they want to go they search how they want to go that's how a skier thinks of a skiing holiday they don't necessarily say i want to go to this resort on those dates they say i want my ski holiday to look like this i've got one and a half thousand pounds I want a short transfer.

5:45Alexander Blunt: I want to go on a long weekend. So flights on Thursday night, good app ray, hotel with a pool on the piste. Where can I go? And most skiers don't mind if that's in Italy or in France or in Austria or in Switzerland. If it meets those requirements, they're happy to take a punt on it. I was seeing from that side, I was working the tour operator world and Marcus was far more sort of in the data led product side. And we came together there and started this exciting mission and i suppose the issue is going on what you've said

6:15Simon Lambert: there is that if you're the kind of person who knows skiing or snowboarding and goes regularly and does trips and treats it like something that you just do normally you might not be able to just drive to the local mountain because unfortunately we live in a country where you can't do that but if you're trying to maximize the amount of ski trips that you do every year and you've been doing that every year for a long time you know where to go you know what resorts to go to you know which airport you need to fly into to get to a certain place and you know where's cheap to fly to and you know where you can get a cheap hire car and all those other things but if you don't know all of those details then you're a bit like and then you're the kind of person that people ask those questions i get all the time where should i go i want to do this and i want to go for this long and it's like i need to basically minimize the amount of time that i'm out of work I can maximize the amount of time that I'm there.

7:07Simon Lambert: You know, how can I do it? And so I suppose if you then build that kind of recommendation into it as well, then that helps people understand where they should go. But how did you turn it from idea into something that actually worked? Developing the website, the actual nuts and bolts of getting that business off the ground. I think lots of people are really interested in that kind of thing because they're like, I could have had that idea, but I don't know how I would have turned it into reality.

7:34Marcus Blunt: yeah well we started really small i think with all big problems you've got to start small um and i think also you know as i said we both had we both had young kids mortgages and weren't really in a place where we could just risk it all and think about what the sort of the key risks were and so first of all it seemed kind of obvious that this sort of business should exist and we're surprised that it didn't and so wanted to figure out how to sort of test some of the risky assumptions in it you know maybe people did actually didn't want to go away for three nights and maybe the market was just there for separate holidays and that's it existed because that's what people wanted.

8:03Marcus Blunt: And so we first figured out how to test whether or not people wanted this sort of level of customization that we thought they did. And so that was done through some pretty basic landing page tests, and we were able to validate that. And then I suppose the next sort of risky assumption was, well, maybe we're not able to do this and get the supply that people would want, and maybe we can't get the economics to work, and maybe we can't get the holidays at the right price. And so this is where our travel industry expertise and contacts came in. We were able to figure out how to test that and sort of call together some dummy packages without actually having to set up a company yet to test appetite against them so we're able to do all these things without actually having to take the plunge to set up a company it involves a bit of time and and thinking but we were able to get to a place where we were confident that people wanted this sort of service and we were confident that we could get the supply and the prices that were right and then that sort of makes the next step much less scary because you've kind of validated some of the those first assumptions.

9:03Marcus Blunt: So I think that's how we started. I was wondering why don't you go and explain what happened next?

9:06Alexander Blunt: So we ran the company in this first season when we were a fully registered company with an ATOL license alongside our full-time jobs. And that was definitely the most full-on and intense year because as I said, you both had kids born in 2018 as well. And that was really what... How difficult was it to get an ATOL license? It was easier then than it is now post-COVID, but it was a very small license. I think, what was it, Mark?

9:27Marcus Blunt: It was 500 passengers. And so that was quite straightforward.

9:31Alexander Blunt: Again, we had the industry experience to understand what kind of systems and processes you need to automate the stuff which we could stuff manually. And that year there was we had approved the assumptions in like a test form was really to prove the assumptions in the actual business case. Can we not just sell a holiday but operate a holiday and do so profitably? And we almost made a pact to each other, didn't we, Marcus? If we did, it was 500 ,000 pounds of sales. If we did 500 ,000 pounds of sales in the first winter, we're going to quit our jobs and go all in. And we actually did that. It was by late January.

10:02Alexander Blunt: And then we had to operate the holidays through February and March. But that just gave us the confidence to then quit our jobs, do a small friend and family fundraising round in order to hire a developer and go from there. It was really intense here.

10:16Simon Lambert: Do you remember how it felt when you sent your first people off on a holiday?

10:21Alexander Blunt: Yeah.

10:21Simon Lambert: Our first booking was really magical, actually.

10:24Alexander Blunt: That was one of the lessons as well. we've learned that we can build an amazing system with loads of automations loads of customization but you still need good people and good suppliers behind the scenes and that first booking it was a fully automated booking it was the ultimate it was booked online it wasn't sort of booked over the phone that marks and myself was booked online and we were high-fiving each other it was amazing it came in the evening and we thought this is brilliant this is this is easy and then within about two hours we got an email from the customer saying well you had like size 15 feet could we guaranteed that the ski hire shop had boots big enough for him and we called i think i spent the yeah a whole afternoon calling every single ski hire shop in chamonix to find the one and so i guess that was it right sort of the uh the highs of the first booking to the lows of oh my god even gonna be able to operate this holiday because the customers got ginormous feet but we did we got

11:11Simon Lambert: them away i love the fact that you've got that automated high-tech holiday booking engine that then ends up with you phoning around ski hire shops and adding the personal touch to it did you get good feedback from people on those holidays that year did you actively try to seek it out from

11:30Alexander Blunt: them we did we did we've always been really obsessed around seeking feedback so our nps post return holiday form is pretty much unchanged since then where we ask the same questions seeking the same feedback which is giving us data points but also allowing the customer to give free text as well and so we obsess over that and i think our trust pilot account was set up then as well and so yes absolutely it's it's absolutely key to what we do and just going back to that side it's the um the success of the business it's it's not just on the customer side it's the supply side you know now we know which ski high shocks and chamonix have size 15 boots and we've learned all that knowledge and so that enables us to scale and automate all those customer requests as well

12:10Simon Lambert: but that takes years to build not soon after you started the business something fairly major happened that caused obvious problems for the travel industry covid how far in were you when that hit in 2020 and how far had you got through sending people on holiday that season because it hit halfway through the ski season didn't it yeah it did so we at that point we'd had the

12:33Marcus Blunt: the first year was about year minus one was the year i was just talking about where we were sort of doing it so on the side of our other our other jobs was just me and alisanda was also working full time elsewhere. Following that, we then sort of quit our jobs and started building a really small team. We were doing so well. We were on track to smash our tugs, we set our big goals on track. And then obviously COVID came along and ruined the party somewhat. And it was an unbelievably stressful thing to go through, as I think it was for many other people and also lots of other businesses. But first of all, we got a pretty hardcore lesson in crisis management, because there was this young business, pretty sort of immature, figuring out how to operate.

13:15Marcus Blunt: And then we had to figure out how to repatriate all of our customers, make sure everyone's taken care of, get them home safely. And whilst obviously all the information was changing so quickly and countries were going into lockdown like dominoes. So that part was incredibly stressful. And then it happened in sort of mid to late March, wasn't it? Mid-March, wasn't it? And so we had about sort of a good month's worth of holidays still to operate, which we couldn't. and so you had to work with you know our suppliers to get all the refunds in order to refund our customers and uh and so on and of course yeah it was an existential crisis for a young business

13:49Alexander Blunt: yeah we were sort of staring into the abyss but again you know worked really we learned the

13:56Marcus Blunt: importance of having a really good communication with the customers you know being sort of honest and transparent about what's happening so they're reassured and then the importance of having good relationship to the suppliers who can work hard to get that money back from them to refund to the customers and we kind of got to got to the end of that uh at the first phase of the covid crisis where it was like okay well we've got everyone home and then everyone who wanted a refund has got one we know how much money we had left the bank and we could sort of just ban down the hatches and get through and we figured you know what let's we could have tried to trade our way through and say well maybe we can trade our way out of this and keep selling holidays but figured you know what there's probably not much point in that because we're probably just selling holidays we're gonna have to cancel next year that doesn't make much sense so instead we used the time to totally rebuild the the technology in particular which was you know everything before had been a very sort of minimum viable product we used the time to like look at everything we'd learned from that year and a half of operating and and totally rebuild the technology work really hard on our supplier value proposition and work on our brand uh work on our sort of customer proposition and processes and so on and so at the time it felt it was um it was a really really challenging time you know it felt we were being punished pretty hard but in fact what we've been given was a strange gift of time where we could work on the business without having to worry about operating it and hit targets and operate holidays and so on and it still doesn't really good stead and i'm really we use that time quite wisely and i think as a result of that we've been able to come out we came out of covid and have grown really really nicely um since then and i put that down to the fact that we had this 12 month period where we could just work uninterrupted on building a great

15:44Simon Lambert: product alexander how long did you not sell holidays for and and was there ever a point where you did actually think maybe this just isn't going to work and we should get out the holiday business?

15:56Alexander Blunt: There were definitely those moments. It was March 2020 that we had to repatriate all the customers. The next winter, we didn't operate any holidays. We actually only made the decision to get going again in August 2021, when we brought team back from furlough. And it was this amazing, special time because the team had been so committed. We were so lucky with the team that we hired back then, and then they came back. So that was almost a year and a half. But I think what people forget, when you look back at COVID, it was all just one blurry period of stressed weirdness. But it actually reared its head again in December 2021 with the Omicron variant.

16:34Alexander Blunt: And for us, I think that was actually possibly the scariest moment because we had made a commitment to ourself to not start operating holidays and selling them until we were confident we could operate them. And we were very lucky that COVID happened in March because it had happened in December. I had to cancel the response holidays. There'd be no idea now. and what actually happened if you remember omicron came the variant came super quickly in mid-december and the swiss and the french all banned the brits from coming so we had to cancel every single christmas and year's eve holiday and that was that was really stressful because we knew what could happen and we made a promise to ourselves not to start the business again until we were confident but thankfully after i think by the 5th of january everyone realized that omicron was literally just a runny nose and there was nothing to worry about then the um the borders opened up again and we had an amazing winter from then it was stressful operating the holidays with all the entry requirements and jabs and vaccine rules and so on and so forth but that's the thing with skiers they are so desperate to go if there's an opportunity to go skiing and even if it's a bit complex when you need to have your booster jab and have a certificate for entering here and a different one for there skiers will do that and we were there to help them and we actually had

17:40Simon Lambert: a great winter for men i mean i remember going away in well we went away in january 2020 that was the last time we went away and then it was two years out right so we couldn't couldn't go to the mountains until january 2022 and then just i remember the omicron thing and i remember it looking like it was going to scupper it we were going to austria me and my wife and then i got covid like three weeks before and i was like oh you're joking and i was fine to go but when we went we had to wear masks to get on the ski lift which was a bit weird wearing a mask on a chair lift i must admit you'd have to put your mask on to get on the lift and then everyone would get on the lift and they take the mask straight back off but they were doing the people working on the lifts a favor by going all right i'll play with it i'll put the mask on and go on but i think to your point of skiers being committed but also like britain's just full stop were really committed to going on holiday weren't they people had their fingers burned and a lot of people had holidays cancelled discovered they couldn't go to places rules got changed they were going somewhere they couldn't go there but demand was very strong wasn't it for booking holidays at the time it was yeah and i

18:54Marcus Blunt: think it's um you know holidays are so important to so many people and and right and rightly so And I think ski holidays especially so because everyone needs escapism, right? And also everyone needs to go and connect with their friends and family in a way that is kind of hard to do in the sort of the busyness of day to day life. And so I think I think people people need that, especially after the couple of years we have the COVID. People are just desperate to get out and have a good time, have some fun, you know, either in the mountains and be skiing and feel that exhilaration or just being somewhere with their friends and family where they can sort of switch off from life and connect with them in a in a way that's hard to so i think people have this real they really prioritize that and and rightly so so we were the demand was very very strong coming out of it yeah once you'd got things

19:43Simon Lambert: back up and running and were fairly confident that you were going to be able to actually send people on pom-s-day service we're going to and something else wasn't going to rear its head was that the point when it became time to really start building the brand and marketing heidi

19:59Marcus Blunt: it was we still had such great belief in the business because it had been it'd been such success from the start even with yeah at the very beginning our website was very very ropey and and as is the case when you're starting from nothing and and the feedback customer feedback had been so good and so we had such we had such great confidence and belief in the business and we made able to get through covid and get through that first of omicron year and and had done had done so well and so we were feeling really confident in our prospects and by that point i think we felt well surely that is the back of covid now now there's nothing holding us back now we can really start to you know invest a bit more in the team and in growing awareness with the company that's when we we we rebranded the company as well so we were called ski zoom previously which was i don't know i'm quite experienced nailing companies it's probably the worst part of starting a company because everything's taken or extremely expensive so so ski zoom is where is where we started but it's not an area which we were particularly happy with and so felt the need to sort of rebrand and give ourselves a fresh start with a brand that we felt represented more more closely so that was the point there in uh whatever whatever the year was the year after after covid they went went for it hammer and tongs alexander how have you built up that

21:17Simon Lambert: customer base you know how have you chosen to to market yourself and to reach other customers is it is it using traditional display advertising is it using social media is it using word of mouth and getting customers to tell other people it's all of that it's a complete mix when you're fast growing you've got to be in all the places and i think we're still learning around getting the

21:40Alexander Blunt: There's a strategy right around top of funnel advertising where you're reaching people who aren't necessarily thinking about booking a ski holiday. But in the early days, you're right, the performance channels work really well because you've got engaged people going to Google saying long weekend ski holidays in March or Easter family holidays. And so that's how we reached customers in the early days. And that's sort of a core part of our strategy. But we've got a fantastic team managing all the social channels. Obviously, AI and those other platforms is an opportunity for us as well. repeat customers we do really well from we genuinely genuinely care about delivering amazing ski holidays and i think our customers experience that whether they get in touch with us or not because even if you book purely online we still want to give a really good pre-holiday experience giving all the right information at the right time and when you're on your holiday

22:25Marcus Blunt: you want to make sure that all that faff from the first day around where do i pick up my ski passes the ski hire shop where the ski school meeting points we try and deliver really good experience

22:34Alexander Blunt: there through our platform and that drives a good repeat rate and a good referral rate and a high NPS score. But if you want to keep growing at the rates which we're growing at, you've got to be in

22:44Simon Lambert: all the places and have a really great team that thankfully we have owning it. And what would be your advice to somebody trying to scale up a business? You know, how would you say to them to get customers in the door? Would it be to try and do all those things? Or would it be to kind of start smaller and then build them up?

22:59Alexander Blunt: You have to start small. And you have to have complete, relentless focus on your core unit economics as well because you can easily just blow your budget and be left with nothing so start small start in the performance marketing space and go from there you know because that's often where the most engaged users are and where you can reach them

23:19Marcus Blunt: but that's a restart and it worked well for us would you agree marcus yeah absolutely yeah i think it's um start small so you can find the people who care most about what it is you're offering and the problem that you're solving for them and you know figure out whatever place that is whatever the right media is for that and start start there and then build out only where you got confidence that the unit economics are looking are looking good and healthy are there any mistakes

23:41Simon Lambert: that you've made along the way that you you tell people to to avoid making um gosh there's uh probably probably quite quite quite a few so i i think on that i think it is i was going to mention

23:57Marcus Blunt: is very easy you know with with sort of marketing these days it's it's so easy to go ahead and deploy budget and spend it very quickly and there are definitely times when just with a sort of a sort of a loose setting here and there you've come in the next day and you think oh blimey how much of that yeah how much has been spent overnight and so i think you know especially if you're if you're starting out you need to be really really laser focused on how your you know marketing campaigns are set up or you've got some total trust in who it is that's that's managing them again if it's the people who are who are starting out know enough about everything because uh you don't need to be an expert in everything but you need to know enough about everything because experts don't always have all the right answers and so be quite easy for sort of you know experts to make recommendations or make changes that actually don't work out for you in your business and so i think it's really important that founders representing the early stages know enough know enough about everything as i can hold the people they work they who advise them and work with the camp as well.

24:55Simon Lambert: And have you both always had a purpose in mind for the business? Has there always been a kind of in your head, a vision of, right, we're doing this because we want to run a business, we want to make money, you know, but ultimately, there's a reason why we're doing this.

25:11Alexander Blunt: Definitely. And ironically for myself, I didn't join this because I wanted to make money. I had a really good job working with great colleagues that I loved. But I just, I myself was so frustrated just how hard it was to book the ski holiday that was right for me and that's really the purpose it's like we want to make it easy for people to get out of the mountains because we believe the mountains are an amazing place that when you're there you have experience that make you healthier and happier but you can connect with your family with your friends or just have some time to yourself and it shouldn't be as difficult as it was as marcus said like we were so lucky growing up in the heart of the scotland where we could go off the lech ski center on a saturday or in oslo where we could jump on the tram and be skiing within an hour from our house.

25:54Alexander Blunt: We want it to be almost that easy for everyone in the UK. And so we've always been purpose-led. It's something we're so passionate about. And I think what we've learned as well is that that passion and mission isn't just shared between Marcus and myself. And as we've grown, you know, we're based in Bristol, which is, it's got a really sort of active outdoorsy population. Loads of people want to come work for us. And that's amazing because also people want to be part of this mission around making it easy to get people out of the mountains, to enable people to have two trips a year on their budget.

26:23Alexander Blunt: So very much so. It's absolutely core to who we are and what we do. The Mound is an amazing place. If we can get more people out there, the better.

26:33Simon Lambert: Because there is a perception in Britain that skiing is for rich people. It's prohibitively expensive. Now, obviously, we can't drive to the Mounders in the same way. You can have to be in Scotland or maybe even in Northern England. but you're very much reliant on the snow and scotland's having a great season at the moment but that's the first time in a in a long while but even for those people in france in germany in italy who don't live close enough to get to the mountains in a couple of hours it's not necessarily considered an elite pastime skiing and snowboarding there is a culture of you just all go cram into an apartment for a week and you have a great time is that something that you want that kind of spirit that you want to bring to people yeah so um i completely agree i think so

27:20Marcus Blunt: first of all of course skiing can be an eye water really expensive holiday you know but doesn't have to be and that's one of the things which which drives us as well and that's one of the reasons why um we sort of set up the technology and us uh the inventory access to in the way that we have because it's all technology based we can connect all the inventory that's out there which means that we don't just have to surface the big name resorts, which might have more expensive lift passes or more expensive accommodation prices and so on and so forth. We're able to connect to all sorts of resorts that may not necessarily be heard of.

27:57Marcus Blunt: And so I myself, I'm often looking at the sales report and get such a kick when I've seen a family of four who've bagged an absolutely amazing half-term deal going to a small family resort in Italy that even I hadn't heard of before starting the company, for example. And I love that because these people I know would not have found this holiday had they not been on highly. They've got themselves an amazing deal. They're going to have an incredible time away as a family in the mountains for an excellent price. And that's the technology working to deliver our purpose. And so, yeah, I get such a kick out of that when I see those bookings on the report.

28:30Simon Lambert: So can you get people away for a long weekend for the price of a city break? Yeah, absolutely.

28:36Alexander Blunt: Yeah, you can. And we do. And you've got to be smart. You know, there are some good options. Poland, Zakopane has got great regional flights into Krakow and then there's a coach down and there's incredible good value skiing there and when you're there the town's great value great food there's destinations all over Europe and again you like our system just pulls those magical destinations together and I think to the point it's like it's it's so important to us that we can break down that narrative that skiing isn't the leader sport because it's not and that narrative needs to be broken and it's something that again is sort of what we're driven by and that's why we partner with um Snow Camp a charity that does amazing things getting in the city kids from disadvantaged backgrounds onto the slopes and reprograms there and as marcus said we look at the sales report and i think another interesting stat sort of actually came out of covid where there was rife inflation and it was the um my winter's right 22 23 our average order value actually went backwards so you're there in inflation when facing is eight percent but the holidays that we were setting that year were cheaper than the prior year why was that because people were coming to our side and they were going for five days not seven days they were doing self-catering not hotel they were sort of going to a different resort and i think that's um that's just brilliant before we finish up we'll go for a

29:52Simon Lambert: few actual kind of you know skiing questions and things like that where would you tell people to try going where would you recommend they try going that isn't just the usual option i think it

30:02Alexander Blunt: depends on what they're doing so i'll use my recent example i went away with my parents who are 72, 73 and my two daughters who are five and seven we went away for a long weekend two weeks ago and we went to Seafeld in Austria which is just the perfect destination for like a multi-generational ski holiday. My dad could ski a bit, mum likes to sit in a mountain restaurant but Seafeld's a beautiful town, pedestrianised streets, cobbled lanes, horse-drawn carts, there's an amazing, it's called the Olympia Bard, big spa area where you can go swimming and it's a small ski area, perfect families perfect for kids we went for three days we had the most incredible time would i go there with my mates probably not it's hard for me to recommend one place because my goal every year is to try somewhere new i always try a new resort every single year because you know we sell every 350 destinations so i want to try them all out eventually so um i think i'll call out my seafeld holiday which was a great shout we had an amazing time how

30:58Marcus Blunt: about you marcus uh well i'm probably going to sort of plug where it all started and it'll be Norway and the answer to that question is it depends what you're after right you know so we not everyone wants the same from a holiday would I recommend us have a quiet Norwegian resort to a group of lads going out for a big boozy trip I don't think I would but for for families absolutely and and the reason for that is at the moment it's actually really great value because the corona is quite quite weak the slopes are quieter it's a it's not a stressful place to ski at all very rarely do you get queues the quality of things are great the mountains are are smaller which among some people may say is not a good thing but if you're skiing with young kids it's a really good thing because it makes it much less intimidating so i think for people with kids or people going you know who've only been once or twice i'd give it a way a go yeah never underestimate

31:45Simon Lambert: the joy of skiing a small resort and finding a good run and lapping it yeah i think back you know

31:52Marcus Blunt: there's the whole point with it sort of with skiing being affordable as well you know especially if you're if you're relatively new to it well you've got kids you don't need 600 kilometers of east you know you're actually probably going to have just as good or even a better time in a smaller place with with it with it with it with your kids you know and i think back to for us i sounded where it all started you know on a sort of the loss of ski hills in norway they just got one lift and we would ski that all day you know as a 14 year old that's all you need you know i

32:22Simon Lambert: mean i used to do the same thing on a dry ski slope so exactly but of course would i want to

32:27Marcus Blunt: ski the same run all day now to 43 year old probably not but but you know it's finding the

32:32Simon Lambert: right thing that's right for the group isn't it okay so you've done the family recommendations but you've been allowed to go away without without your families without without your children yeah you're allowed to go away with your friends for a long weekend where would you recommend someone

32:46Alexander Blunt: goes somewhere a bit more cultural the olympics one in italy at the moment what an advert for our sector that is um the dolomites which held in cortina a bit further north to the resorts on the cellaronda with your mates uh it's not wild that bray but it is so fantastic incredible scenery you can set yourself a good challenge to ski the cellaronda in a day stopping off at the most incredible mountain hut serving the most incredible pizza it's good value it's really

33:14Simon Lambert: really good value so if it's if it's something a bit more civilized with good good sort of

33:20Alexander Blunt: challenging um skiing where you want to crew the kilometers i'd say give that a go that was my new destination last year and absolutely loved it i think if it's all about the party folly deuce resorts in france are good but for me there's no comparison for austria they just know how to do it the beer is still cheap the schnapps is still good value everyone's dancing on the tables it's just an incredible experience but uh seven nights of that for me can get a bit

33:45Simon Lambert: much so i guess it's all horses for courses well i suppose the advantage of that for those of us in our 40s is if you start early you can finish early and bring them to bed by half past nine marcus what about your recommendation if you're i'm gonna go with my friends maximum skiing

34:00Marcus Blunt: i'm gonna go back to my spreadsheet i talked about the spreadsheet and the holiday they gave us and the destination we ended up with soldan in austria and so i'm gonna i'm gonna go i'm gonna go with that because it worked brilliantly for us and i was going with a group of mates the skiing is fantastic it's like if the vertical drop is enormous so the runs are just i mean they're proper leg burners from top from top to bottom over to a 2000 meter vertical drop it is just fun and austrian and i'm serious and a good time that would be my one but it's so hard just to recommend one place right because you know you're out in the mountains everywhere's good everywhere's good you know when there's when there's a ski lift and there's mountains and the snow, it doesn't matter if it was good, I think anyway.

34:42Simon Lambert: What next for Heidi? Have you got plans to move in to other areas of the holiday sector beyond the winter holidays?

34:51Marcus Blunt: Yeah, we do. So what we believe as a company is that everyone's healthier and happier than spending time in the mountains. Obviously, so the number way and the way we try and get close to achieve that mission now is through ski holidays. But the mountains are amazing in summer as well. And so we sort of started out of pilot offering for summer holidays last year. and that was accessible so we're looking to build on that this year and so there's there's still a lot of work to do there in order to expand the product but we're really excited about that and we think there's a lot of opportunity there you know of course with um you know we operate uh in the uk and ireland as well so we'll of course consider other you know other source markets that that could work for us maybe there are maybe there aren't uh but i think for for the immediate future i think there's a lot more to do here in ski for uk customers and we're really excited about figuring out how to get more people out there in the summer as well.

35:41Simon Lambert: And Alexander, final question. Do you ever have customers coming to you trying to go to even further flung places that you don't even offer on the site? We do.

35:52Alexander Blunt: And I'd love to get more destinations live. You know, currently we just have the main European destinations live, but we don't have North America, we don't have Japan, we don't have Georgia.

36:03Marcus Blunt: Loads more places to get live. But I think going back to the point Marcus

36:05Alexander Blunt: said we have to stay really focused on what we're doing and do it well um that's what we're going to keep doing so unfortunately we tell those customers we can't help get your way to uh to Armenia or to Georgia but have you considered one of these other 360 fantastic resorts in Europe that

36:19Simon Lambert: we have but um yeah watch the space Georgia looks amazing but I don't know how you're going to phone up all the ski shops in town asking whether they've got a size 15 boots Alexander Marcus thank you

36:32Alexander Blunt: very much for joining us on this morning podcast thank you and thank you very much for listening

36:36Simon Lambert: join us next time we'll be back from the normal podcast goodbye