Holidays are back and we're here to help!
While travel was on hold we've upgraded our service to get you the help you need in lightning-quick time. We're back and faster than ever. Our team is ready to help in any way we can - the easiest way to reach us is by live chat (check our opening times). Or if something has gone wrong and you'd like to give us some feedback, get in touch with our dedicated customer team and we'll look into it for you.
We've worked hard on our flexibility and introduced FLEXTRAS - if you buy your holiday extras from Holiday Extras, you'll be getting the most flexible terms anywhere. We're also investing heavily in our app with a big focus on HEHA! - The Holiday Extras Holiday Assistant which makes it even easier and even faster to search, book and save.
You're welcome to email me about anything at all - ideas, suggestions and feedback. I read every email and will make sure your query is swiftly actioned with the right people. If needed I'll follow up in person too.
Thanks for choosing Holiday Extras. Wishing you safe and happy travels.
David Lee
Director of Innovation & Growth
My journey so far
I first joined Holiday Extras in 2008 as a student on a 6 week placement, and it took me a matter of seconds to realise this is where I needed to be. The culture and working environment completely redefined what I thought 'work' should be, so once I graduated I jumped at the opportunity to come back and work here, initially in the PPC team.
I have always been a data geek, so once I was let loose on the wealth of data available here, I quickly started finding new ways to shape it in order to drive profitable insights- and I haven't looked back since.
14 years later, I'm now proud to be the Director of Innovation & Growth here. My role is doing more of the same, only now on a much bigger scale.
I'm responsible for driving our performance forward, ensuring we are delivering value to our customers and offering the right products to them once on the site. A part of my role that I love is helping customers fill their baskets with great value hassle free extras and, in doing so, creating happy loyal customers who love the products, recommend us to their friends and return to us time and again.
You can usually find me with far too many tabs open and my head deep in a dataset, or getting overly excited by a trend line! I am passionate about data literacy and giving everyone in the business the tools and the skills to understand, analyse and act on data. There are few things more satisfying than spotting an opportunity in data, working with a team to build it into a test, and then nurturing it all way through from an opportunity to a successful outcome.
Holiday Extras is such an amazing place to work with so many innovative and forward thinking people, that any idea will be listened to and the next big thing can come from anyone and anywhere in the business. My role is to protect and grow that culture of innovation because it is a core part of what makes Holiday Extras so special.
Life before Holiday Extras
I studied Marketing and Advertising in Canterbury and graduated in 2009 with first class honours. Looking back, my marketing course was almost entirely about offline media, as social media marketing hadn't taken off yet and search and display marketing was still in its infancy. Whether much of what I learnt at university would stand up in the modern world of marketing is certainly questionable, but it gave me a great grounding in consumer behaviour, and taught me how to communicate my ideas effectively and translate them into actions.
Life outside Holiday Extras
My life outside of Holiday Extras consists of, together with my wife Emily, attempting to keep up with our 3 amazing children. We spend most of our time having as much fun as possible, whether it's adventure play parks, swimming, climbing, bike riding or trampolining. Any time I manage to get to myself will usually consist of watching (or occasionally playing) any kind of sport that I can. I'm a big cricket, football, and combat sports fan, but I can pretty much get into anything that has a competitive element to it (and yes, that even includes darts!)
What's your perfect holiday?
My perfect holiday is anywhere that has fast rollercoasters and ice cream! My kids are already budding thrill seekers too, standing tall on tiptoes in an attempt to be big enough for any rides with height restrictions!
Inspiration
Anyone who is prepared to actively seek out the things that make them most uncomfortable as a way to improve themselves, is a huge inspiration to me.
