About Us, Round The World Trip Specialists

About Us

Travel Nation was established in 2001 by Haydn Wrath. We are an ABTA and ATOL bonded travel company that specialises in creating multi stop long-haul trips, including round the world flights, tours and hotels. Our staff are all seasoned travel industry professionals whose expertise and travel experience will be immediately apparent when you contact us. We are big enough to cope but small enough to care and take immense pride in our excellent service levels as evidenced by the great customer feedback we receive. Our service continues throughout the life of your booking, even extending even to a date change service while you are travelling, where you can contact the same person who you booked your flights with while you are on your round the world trip.

Travel Nation was selected by BBC1 and travel journalist Simon Calder to book a complex round the world trip for the a four week special on the Holiday Programme in 2007. We were also recommended in ‘Which? Travel’ magazine’s Round the World special edition in April 2011.

Check out our staff profiles below. If there is someone you would particularly like to deal with, feel free to contact them directly using the contact details below.

About Haydn

Looking back at my first travel experience, it is actually a minor miracle that I ended up being responsible for planning other people’s once in a lifetime trips. It all started when I was 18 years old, way back in 1980, long before Lonely Planet books, round the world specialists and travel companies had made it to Nottingham…

I hitch-hiked to London (my first time there), asked a bemused policeman where the road to Dover was and followed his instructions to Elephant and Castle tube station, and set off walking and hitch-hiking into the night down the Old Kent Road, expecting to get to the edge of London in a couple of hours. Eventually, a warm hearted cabbie on his way home somewhere in Kent picked me up (kick-starting a lifelong brand loyalty to black cabs) in what I guess would have been New Cross, so not too far from the countryside… In this fashion, I finally made it to the Suez Canal in Egypt, where my plan to get on board a cargo ship heading for Bombay failed. This was just as well, as looking at my old blue passport, I didn’t have a visa for India anyway. Disastrous as this adventure was, the seed had been sown. Read more

I left the University of East Anglia in 1984 and escaped what seemed a very grim England by spending the rest of the 1980s travelling and working round the world. During this time I sustained my wanderlust by putting in the usual stints as an English teacher in Tokyo, a landscape gardener in Sydney, and a tarmac layer’s assistant in Alaska. After a year or so at STA Travel (in a branch that apparently couldn’t do without me as it is now a Starbucks café !), I joined Bridge the World Travel Centre in Camden in 1991 where I put my degree in politics and philosophy to good use by spending the rest of the 90s as the sales manager there.

In 2001, I fulfilled my ambition to set up a travel company with high service levels that specialises in creating round the world trips by founding Travel Nation. In 2008, I set up another travel company called Rickshaw Travel, (www.rickshawtravel.co.uk) which features a series of country specific websites where independent travellers can work with round the world specialists to plan and create their own trip. Both companies are based in the same premises and I split my time between them.

Things have moved on a pace since 1980, and if you are thinking of booking with us, don’t worry, we won’t make you start your travels by hitching to Egypt and trying to talk your way onto a cargo ship !

About Us

About Haydn

Sean

Jackie

Heather

Martin

Sally

Sophie

Elodie

Andrea

Liz

Sara

Alarna

Adam

Laura

Norman

Annie

Ben

Jonny

Matt

Haydn