This week sees the tenth birthday of Golfbreaks.com and all seventy-five staff were present to mark the occasion with an after-hours party near their Windsor office. It marks an astonishing development since the company was founded by Andrew Stanley back in 1998 and started its operations in a bedroom at Andrew’s home.
“I spent the first year organising Ryder Cup style matches for groups of golfers,” says Andrew, “mainly with two teams from a golf club, society or corporate. My cousin, Guy Proddow, came on board after a year to launch the website www.golfbreaks.com in August 1999 and we moved into a shared office in Chiswick with two phones, two desks and two computers.
“Enquiries started coming in thick and fast, so very quickly we had to find a bigger office. The two other directors, Daniel Grave and Steve Hemsworth, (both friends of mine) joined at that time and they helped to build the company specialising respectively in sales and operations.”
The company quickly outgrew the office in Chiswick and moved to Windsor. They now have 75 staff.
For the first five years they built their reputation by specialising in organising one and two night golf breaks in the UK but the area of operations has expanded considerably and Golfbreaks currently works with over 800 venues across the UK, Europe and Northern Africa. Soon to be launched are in other parts of the world: Dubai, USA, South Africa and Mauritius.
The company now also operates through ‘sister sites’: www.corporategolfdays.com , www.TeeOffTimes.co.uk , and www.golfshake.com
“Bookings are currently 6% up on last year,” says Andrew “and we are on track to have our third successive year booking over 100,000 golfers to go away on golf breaks.” What a good way to celebrate your birthday.
Golfbreaks www.golfbreaks.com