TTG – Travel industry news – Tailored Adventure Tours

14 Feb 2025by

Abigail Healy

It may come as little surprise that the travel industry is full of romance. This Valentine’s Day, we hear the trade’s tales of finding, facilitating and celebrating love

Valentine’s Day

Travel and romance are inexorably intertwined – the industry has helped make many a customer’s romantic dreams come true, organising giddy couples’ first holidays together, planning engagements in memorable locations and pulling off the ultimate destination weddings. And travel can also lead people to find their perfect partner, whether that’s locking eyes with an attractive stranger in a hotel cocktail bar or even while selling holidays in a high street agency.

Here’s our pick of the bunch of your travel love stories.

Table of Contents

Full of surprises

The team at Ponders Travel regularly add romantic touches to their clients’ special holidays, yet there’s one story of blossoming young love that manager Clare Dudley is keen to share.

“A few years back, an 18-year-old called Rosie came in with her dad, wanting to arrange a holiday for her boyfriend David’s birthday,” she enthuses.

“She was shy but so keen to create an amazing trip for him. You could almost see love hearts coming out of her eyes,” Dudley remembers fondly.

They booked an Icelandic getaway including a whale watching trip on David’s birthday.

“We had pictures of them on the trip and a lovely note on their return,” Dudley recalls.

The Ponders Travel team loved planning surprise trips for young lovebirds David and Rosie

A year later, a young man came in asking to book a surprise trip for his girlfriend who was at university studying to become a teacher. It turned out to be David.

“He wanted to go to Japan but we were worried as he had a low budget,” Dudley says.

The team pulled it off with an Insider Journeys trip and the pair had an incredible time.

“To us that is love,” Dudley says. “That whole process of it continuing. We are hoping to do their engagement or wedding one day.” She adds: “Rosie came in recently and booked a trip to Los Angeles and Las Vegas. So the love story continues…”

Wedded bliss

There are few things as romantic as a wedding and Peter Shaw, travel consultant at Hays Travel Dundee, has a tale to swoon over.

Shaw and his partner, Lisa, had been together since 2017 when she was his assistant manager at Thomas Cook. Having bought a house and had a daughter, the pair decided to marry in Croatia.

They found a stunning spot at the Isabella Resort by Valamar in Porec and, along with a party of 34, headed there for the big day on 6 July last year.

“The location was perfect,” Shaw enthuses. “Right on the waterfront between two trees.”

Peter and his wife Lisa fell in love while working together in a Thomas Cook agency

One highlight was an Orcadian Strip the Willow ceilidh dance at the evening reception. “The bar staff were amazed – they wanted to learn it!” Shaw laughs.

Not everything went to plan however…

“I was asked to play a song for Lisa to walk in to. It was supposed to be A Thousand Years by Christina Perri but I played Perri’s Jar of Hearts. Those lyrics are far from romantic!’” Shaw cringes.

Fortunately only Lisa noticed and the romance was saved by one of the guests finding a painting in a local shop that depicted the exact spot they had wed in and presented it as a wedding gift. A memento of a moment the Shaws will remember for ever.

Travel Counsellors Becky Selby and Sarah Preston met through working in travel

A fairy-tale romance

Travel Counsellors Becky Selby and Sarah Preston’s love story is one worthy of a fairy tale in the perhaps unlikely setting of a TMC.

The pair were working at the same company, Preston was married, Selby was single, the Covid pandemic was coming to an end, and they were regularly conversing via Microsoft Teams.

“We realised we had similar work values and were on the same page with how we wanted to look after customers,” explains Preston.

Then they came face-to-face at a work conference.

“I realised I had never felt the way I did about Becky with anyone before and had to make some drastic life choices.” Preston asserts.

“I had never been with a woman before,” Selby adds. “So I felt very confused by my feelings.”

Sure enough, romance blossomed. Two years later the pair made the move to Travel Counsellors.

“It was a breath of fresh air as we were welcomed with open arms and encouraged to be who we were,” Preston asserts.

Ever since, their love for each other, and for travel, has flourished. It also includes Sarah’s eight-year-old son Ryan and three dogs – a staffy, a lurcher and a sausage dog.

A modern day fairy tale indeed.

A holiday romance turned serious for Karen Marin Reyes

Livin’ La Vida Loca

At the age of 18, Karen Marin Reyes, founder and director of La Vida Travel, embarked on an adventure that would change her life for ever. She joined the holiday industry, working as a representative for Intasun, Lancaster and Global – two of the most well-known and respected travel companies in the UK at the time.

“My first assignment took me to the sun-drenched island of Majorca, where I was filled with excitement and a bit of nervous energy as I began my new role,” recounts Reyes.

It was on her very first day, still adjusting to the vibrant Spanish culture, that she met Juan, her future husband, who was working in the bar at the hotel where she was based, the Amapola. They both felt an instant mutual attraction, like a magnetic pull between them.

She remembers: “The days and weeks that followed were filled with laughter, shared moments, and a love that grew faster than I could have ever imagined.”

By the time they had both turned 25, they had returned to the UK to settle down. They married, and before long, were blessed with three children: “Our little family that became our entire world.”

Trips to Spain are an annual event, and Reyes never lost her passion for travel, going on to set up independent agency La Vida Travel in Newport, Wales: “I named the agency La Vida as my whole life has been travel, and La Vida means ‘The Life’.”

“Now, 35 years later, I still can’t help but smile when I think about how it all began – a chance encounter in a bar on a sunlit island, where two people from different worlds found each other. We’ve built a life full of love, laughter, challenges and triumphs, and through it all we’ve been side by side. Our marriage has been a journey, and every single moment has been worth it because it led us to this beautiful life we share.”

Worth the wait

Gold Travel Counsellor Gillian Stewart has an air of Cupid about her, with tales of hopelessly romantic honeymoons and lovestruck clients. The most exciting, however, is that of a client she met while working at HolidaysPlease.

“As well as my own list of clients we also worked from a pool of enquiries. Those often had low conversions but I instantly knew Ben was serious,” Stewart says.

Ben was keen to book a special trip for his girlfriend’s 40th and Stewart went back and forth, eventually settling on a Dubai and Maldives twin-centre.

“He was one of the Covid clients that was constantly getting rebooked,” she explains. “It was such a special holiday and I worked hard to keep it alive.”

The trip ended up being rebooked three times and the pair finally travelled in 2022.

“On top of it being her birthday trip, he proposed, after 13 years of being together,” Stewart reveals. “She had no idea! He had hidden the ring from her. They had a beautiful dinner on the beach in the Maldivian Kuredu Island Resort and she said yes. The resort opened a bottle of champagne and said they should return for their anniversary.”

Long-distance relationship

Leah Marshall renewed her wedding vows at Sandals Ochi Beach in 2022

When Sandals’ director of sales Leah Marshall fell in love – she fell hard. So hard that despite being in a long-distance relationship she just couldn’t stay away.

“Sandals Ochi Beach is just perfect. It’s an amazing resort but allows you to explore all the attractions of Jamaica too,” she smiles, lovestruck. Marshall is so enamoured of the resort she returns every year for the same October week.

Of course, there couldn’t have been a better venue for her own wedding.

“It was a holiday my boyfriend and I had already booked. We had had a horrendous year personally so, with two weeks’ notice, we decided we’d get married while out there. I ordered three dresses from good old John Lewis – one fitted so off we went and we were married at the roof-terrace restaurant,” she imparts.

Covid briefly put the brakes on the love affair but in 2022 the pair returned with Marshall’s husband’s 22- and 24-year-old sons, their girlfriends and another couple for a renewal of vows.

“The ceremony was in the overwater wedding chapel, I had a proper dress this time and Sandals director of weddings and romance Marsha-Ann Donaldson arranged the most amazing wedding breakfast in the yoga pavilion,” Marshall says.

With further trips in 2023 and 2024 it seems Ochi Beach will be Marshall’s lifelong love.