Hello! My name's Chelsea and I'm absolutely obsessed with finding cheap holidays.

Yep, I am that person who will spend hours on the sofa, laptop open, with my hands scuttling over the keyboard as I try and find a 5 star hotel for the price of a Blackpool B&B. It's not even that I'm particularly tight wadded, there's just something I find so rewarding about scoring a 4 night stay in Lisbon for half the price that's advertised online.

It was this love for finding a bargain that set me on my way to making YouTube videos after a study found that the average Brit spends £3418 a year on holidays. I thought this was ABSURD (and still do) and so decided to do 10 holidays for half that price. I made it harder by needing to do two week long jaunts, visit three continents, only use annual leave and even fly Business Class at least once. And just like that, How Many Holidays was born.

I finished the year off with a few quid to spare, but I quickly realised that I didn't want it to stop there. I wanted to not only keep finding bargains for myself, but continue sharing these travel hacks to help other people travel more for less money. Since then I've done an epic 12 night holiday around Japan for under a grand, and even completed a 6 night road trip around Iceland for £600 all in.

It got to a stage where I was doing radio, TV and newspaper interviews -speaking about my expertise in cheap travel - that I realised that perhaps I needed take How Many Holidays to the next level.

And that's when Cheap Holiday Expert was born. It's what I kept getting introduced as and we couldn't believe it when the website and social media handles were still available. It felt like a sign!

However, what was less of a sign was when we were set to launch this 'rebrand'.

In April 2020.

Yikes!

So what happened was that instead of launching a new travel site, I pivoted and started offering help to people trying to get refunds from their cancelled trips due to the pandemic. And as the issues only intensified, I switched to helping people understand the complicated travel rules when we were finally able to do so.

In fact, it's only really been in 2023 that I've been able to operate Cheap Holiday Expert in the way that I initially foresaw - as being a hub for cheap travel advice and inspiration!

Along with the website, I've been growing my social channels - I currently have over 350k followers across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube - and also been raising my profile as the Cheap Holiday Expert by appearing as a travel expert on This Morning, and across several other news and media outlets. I've also now got an office and alongside the housemate James, we've taken on 2 people to see what we can rustle up next.

It's been a wild ride so far - but I feel like the fun has only just begin!