Alex Calderwood
Founder: Ace Hotels
Age: 38
Shaking up the hotel trade by blending luxury and budget
Calderwood is a leading creative force behind the Ace hotel group, one of the the most innovative in North America. In 2009, Ace will open hotels in New York and Palm Springs. "Ultimately, we want the hotels to feel residential, like staying in someone's apartment," he says. The first Ace, in Seattle, broke several sacred rules when it opened in 1999. A former boarding house, most of the rooms had shared bathrooms, but the owners resisted the temptation to turn them all en suite. "In a deck of cards the ace is both high and low. We chose it because we wanted the brand to appeal to every sort of traveller."
A room at the New York Ace, which opens in the spring, will start at $169 a night, rising to $700. "Affordability is in our DNA," Calderwood says. "It's not about being the cheapest but it is about delivering good value."
Ace hotels are also full of enjoyable quirks; the Seattle one has a laundry room: "Our guests aren't into dry cleaning, but if you've just flown in from Japan it's a luxury to be able to put your things in a washing machine in the middle of the night." The group's second hotel opened in Portland, Maine in 2007 and features turntables in the rooms and a library of vinyl. Palm Springs will have a bohemian edge to reflect its Californian heritage.
"We didn't know anything about hotels when we started," says Calderwood. "We just went on instinct."
• Top tip: "Right now it's all about Japan. They have very creative solutions to space and culture. I know Tokyo well but this year I want to explore the rest of the country."
Lisa Sounio
Founder: Dopplr
Age: 38
Holiday planning for the Facebook generation
Most social networking sites allow you to tell people where you have been. Dopplr.com lets you know where your friends - and their friends - are going to be. Sounio, who is based in Helsinki, and her friends came up with the idea in 2006: "We were friends from all across the globe - San Francisco, London and Finland - and couldn't keep track of each other. All of us had spent a lonely night in a hotel in a foreign city, only to realise afterwards that a friend had been there at the same time without realising.
"Dopplr helps you plan your travel and tells you what your carbon footprint is, using a clean, unfussy design. We hired a cottage near Brighton for a couple of days, ate spinach pasta and brainstormed until we came up with the kind of site we wanted. Dopplr is a social networking site, but it's more private than Facebook. We always wanted 1.5 million users and we're almost there. Some social networking sites can get too big too fast - people pile in to take a look and then get bored, but we want everyone to be active and get more out of travelling."
• Top tip: "For me, it's the UK. Over the next year places close to us are going to become important, so people in Britain will rediscover the British coast and its cities. Britain might be in recession but the greatest business ideas still come from London."
Sharon Holmes
Founder: Native Escapes
Age: 38
Helping travellers see africa, up close and personal
Redundancy was the change Holmes needed to finally make the leap and become her own boss: "I'd always wanted to run my own business, and after seven years working in tourism marketing I felt I'd learnt enough to give it a go. I'd visited southern Africa several times and loved it - and knew from research and looking at tourist board statistics that visitor numbers were on the rise."
She was keen to work with suppliers, hoteliers and companies that offered the chance to connect with local people and put money into communities, giving travellers the opportunity to experience a more authentic, less sanitised version of southern Africa. Having talked to the tourist boards, she travelled to the countries she wanted to work with - Namibia, South Africa, Botswana and Zambia - to seek out likeminded businesses.
"I met guides, visited lodges, checked out excursions and by last February I was ready to launch my own ethical tour company, Native Escapes - seven months after being made redundant."
• Top tip: "In Botswana the government has allowed only limited tourism development, which means there are only a few lodges. Its pricey, but for a real wilderness trip with a lots of wildlife, it's unbeatable."
Graham Austick
Founder: Piste to powder and Lyngen Lodge
Age: 38
Letting skiers get far from the madding crowd
Most mountain guides grow up in Alpine villages and follow their fathers' crampon steps into the mountains. So it's all the more impressive that Austick, one of the most innovative guides working in Europe today, grew up in Newcastle and started out working for his dad's electrical engineering firm. "After a while it was a case of 'Son, you ain't going to fit in here'," he says. "I spent every possible spare minute skiing, so pretty soon I decided I had to make it my career."
After parting company with his dad, aged 19, Austick moved to St Anton, Austria, and by 2000 had become the first Briton to have both the top British skiing-instruction qualification and the highest-level mountain guiding certificate. The same year, he set up Piste to Powder, a ski school specifically catering to the growing number of people who wanted to ski off-piste. Rather than hiring a private guide for at least £250 a day, it meant individuals could turn up, pay a flat fee (this winter £71) and join a group of a similar standard. A simple idea, but traditional Alpine ski schools have always been slow to innovate, and copycat operations are only now starting to pop up in the Alps.
But Austick didn't stop there. Recognising that more and more skiers were looking for adventures away from crowded resorts, he started running trips to ever more remote slopes - from Greenland to Alaska, Russia, the Himalayas and South America. Austick pushed into the least visited areas, until clients were skiing down mountains that had never been climbed, let alone skied before. In Alaska, the group travelled into the wilderness on a ski-equipped light aircraft then set up camp, in Greenland they arrived by dogsled.
Now Austick has a new focus - the Lyngen Alps in arctic Norway. "When I first went I'd never seen anywhere like it for skiing - super mountains, great snow, and your final turns finish on the beach where the waves are breaking." He started ski trips in the area based on a chartered sail boat, but has now built his own wilderness lodge, from which skiers are ferried by speed boat to different mountains each day. "For your average alpine skier, the concept of skiing untracked powder, and ending up on the beach, is just bananas really."
• Top tip: "Ski touring [using sticky skins attached to skis to climb uphill, rather than ski lifts] is coming into its own. Heliskiing is fun, but there's a level of stress that you don't get with ski touring. People are wanting to come back to the roots and get back to the real feeling of being in mountains."
www.pistetopowder.com; lyngenlodge.com
Stevie Christie
Director: Wilderness Scotland
Age: 31
Sharing a love of adventure in the highlands and islands
What separates Wilderness Scotland from other similar companies is the local knowledge every member of staff has, which helps create its unique brand of holidays. Christie is no exception; he joined the company in 2003 as a mountain guide and still loves to get out on the mountains whenever he can.
"I grew up in the area and after three years at the Scottish Executive, working on environmental policy, I knew I wanted a job that - at least partly - involved being outdoors," he says.
"Wilderness Scotland was started by Neil Burnie and Paul Eastow in Neil's bedroom. They had both worked overseas on eco-projects in the developing world, but felt that no one was offering that type of holiday back in Scotland. The idea was to combine their experience of working in ecology, with their expert knowledge of the local area."
Alongside traditional hiking and mountain-biking holidays, Wilderness Scotland offers more unusual trips - kayaking, photography and family exploratory holidays - and has expanded its brand of eco-friendly holidays overseas. "We set up a sister company about three years ago, Wilderness Journeys, which runs trips to remoter parts of Kenya, South America and Bhutan. All the trips work with local people, and ensure the economic benefits go to the local community."
Wilderness Scotland is run on green principles, and is introducing an optional payment of £5-£10 per booking, matched by the company, to go to nominated environmental projects.
• Top tip: "The credit crunch means more people will be holidaying in the UK - as they should. Scotland is the adventure capital of Europe, and has some of the best mountain-biking and kayaking in the world."
Jamie Andrews
Co-founder: Loco2travel
Age: 25
Finding a viable alternative to flying
The idea was conceived by Jamie's sister Kate, who wanted to travel after university and found there were limited resources for people who wanted to make long-haul journeys without flying. "She mocked up the website, but the problem was that it was almost impossible to create a journey planning tool that could combine global information on bus, train, boat and ferry links," he says. "At this point it was just an idea, and Kate decided to go travelling."
This was where Jamie came in; having worked for a web development company, he created the current loco2travel.com website. "It's very much a version 1.0 at the moment," he says. "There are two main strands we're working on. The journey planner is integral to what we want the site to be. But the other strand is to enable people to have authentic gap-year experiences; to travel overland and get involved in projects as you travel."
Andrews admits travelling overland can be daunting, and loco2 aims to set up itineraries - including placements with community projects - to make it easier. "We want to be useful for those who want to travel on a whim, and for those planning a whole adventure."
• Top tip: "Convergence on Copenhagen is about bringing people together who are travelling to November's Climate Conference without flying. Using the internet, they can join up and stay together on their way to Denmark - a kind of 'secular pilgrimage'."
Verity Bertram
Founder: 20 days
Age: 30
Removing the stress of organising a group getaway
After running her university's branch of Busc (the British Universities Sports Council) and a year in Australia organising sporting events, Bertram saw a gap in the market for a company specialising in group trips and days out. "Organising a group holiday can be a nightmare," she says, "but it's something I've always enjoyed, and felt that people would really use a company that took over all the administration." She started the website at the end of 2006 with a 25-person trip to Puerto Banús in Spain, and the business has built steadily.
"There are two aspects to the firm," she says. "The first is where we put on an event or a holiday - we organise transport, accommodation, excursions, find the best bars and restaurants - and people sign up in any number to join the group, from one to 40. The second is where a group comes to us - either corporate or friends - who might want a ski trip to Switzerland or to go kite-surfing in Italy, and we organise the holiday for them.
"We've also introduced 'Snowdays', where we book a variety of accommodation in a ski resort and arrange entertainment and excursions people can join in or not as they like. People nominate a group leader and use their name when booking on the site. We collate all the bookings, then contact the group leader with the information, so no one has to take responsibility for booking the whole trip."
• Top tip: "Holidays are going to be the new hunting ground for singles - the days of 'singles holidays' as such, are long gone. The web is making it much easier to find like-minded people for a trip abroad."
Tom Dawe and Lisa Knights
Founders: Yurtel
age: 29 and 34
Taking the mud and the misery out of festival-going
The original idea behind Yurtel was a mobile spa business; Dawe and Knights were both massage therapists who decided to create a spa they would take to festivals. "We wanted to offer massages and treatments but weren't sure what kind of structure to use. We decided on a yurt and in 2007, we took just one yurt around the country, offering treatments," says Dawes.
While at the festivals, they realised that although there were companies offering "comfortable accommodation", a gap in the market remained.
"There was nothing particularly luxurious, and we felt yurts could offer that, so we went back to the guy in Devon where we had bought our first one and ordered 12 more. We then set up a mobile hotel: each yurt has a kingsized bed and fresh flowers, and we still offer the spa treatments. At some festivals we offer a B&B service - fresh croissants and coffee."
Yurtel's clients tend to be older people who might not go to festivals if it meant toughing it out under canvas, and they intend to up the luxury factor.
"We're looking to add five more yurts and also a shower and toilet trailer." But Dawe admits that their long-term goal is a touch more glamorous: "Our ultimate dream is a health retreat somewhere overseas. We're heading to Goa next month to look at possible locations."
• Top tip: "As the recession bites, holidaying in the UK will become more popular. With stress levels increasing, people will be looking to nurture their mind, body and soul at affordable destinations within the UK."
