More Than Holidays: Why I Created Voyantra

Voyantra Holidays probably wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been made redundant.

In December 2025, after 15 years working in advertising and marketing, helping large commercial businesses promote themselves, grow and make money, I suddenly found myself asking a fairly simple question:

Why not do it for myself?

I had spent much of my career helping other people achieve their goals. If I was going to build something of my own, I wanted it to combine that experience with something that genuinely inspired me… For me, that was travel.

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to many places around the world, and I’ve always loved holidays. But the more I’ve travelled, the more I’ve realised that it isn’t simply the holiday itself that excites me, it’s everything that comes with it.

It’s arriving somewhere you’ve never been before… The weather, the views, the food, the people and the culture. It’s learning something you didn’t know yesterday, it’s relaxing beside a pool one day and going off on an adventure the next.

It’s travelling with family and creating memories together… It’s discovering somewhere you barely knew existed… And sometimes it’s trying something you once thought you’d never have the opportunity to experience.

Travel has also taught me that actually experiencing a place can give you a very different perspective from the one you might have formed through news reports, videos, other people’s opinions or somebody else’s version of that country.

There is an enormous world out there, and I still find it inspiring to discover just how much of it there is to experience.

Building Voyantra

I knew when I started that the online holiday market wasn’t exactly short of competition.

There are hundreds of travel businesses competing for people’s attention, and it would have been very easy to become another one doing exactly the same thing. That wasn’t what interested me.

The name Voyantra came while I was talking with the tour operators I would eventually partner with. I’d been stuck trying to find a name that felt right until I started playing with two words at the heart of what I wanted to create:

Voyages and Travel = Voyantra.

For me, it came to represent the idea of a seamless, precise and perfectly planned travel experience.

I brought plenty of experience in sales, advertising, marketing and looking after customers, but I didn’t come into Voyantra pretending I already knew everything about the travel industry… I didn’t, so I learned.

I worked with our travel partners, and I have completely dived into the industry and enrolled with Travel Uni to continue developing my knowledge of destinations, countries and cultures. It has been hard work, but that’s partly because of the way I approach things. If I’m going to do something, I want to do it properly. I tend to immerse myself in it completely.

And I’ve loved the whole nine yards of it!

Finding what’s available around the world. Discovering places I’d never previously considered. Building holidays. Researching destinations. Creating the website. Producing the advertising. And then working out how we can present all of that differently from the hundred other travel businesses competing for the same person’s attention.

What Does a Holiday Really Have to Be Worth?

One of the things I’ve thought about a lot while building Voyantra is value. Value of a product.. value of a service… value of experience! And value doesn’t necessarily mean cheap.

There are plenty of budget airlines, travel companies and tour operators, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Different people want different things from their holidays.

What I don’t want is for somebody to feel ripped off, pressured into something or to arrive and discover that the experience isn’t what they thought they were buying. I’d rather think about what somebody is actually getting for their money.

Value versus Cost?

Imagine a couple spending £2,000 returning to the same destination for seven nights and having essentially the same holiday they’ve had before, over and over again.

Now imagine they discover that, for £3,500, they could spend nine nights in a beautiful four- or five-star tropical hotel in Hoi An, Vietnam — somewhere they may barely have known existed and perhaps somewhere they’ll only experience once in their lives.

The second holiday costs more… But which represents greater value to them?

There isn’t one correct answer… If somebody loves returning to the same place every year, I’m certainly not going to tell them they’re doing holidays incorrectly. If you know exactly where you want to go, my job is to help make that happen as well as I can.

But if you’re open to something different, I’d like to think Voyantra Holidays would be the place that occasionally makes you stop and think: “I didn’t realise I could do that.”

That’s the part of travel I find exciting myself, and it’s something I want to share.

 

So Why Are We Doing This?

This part of Voyantra is something I’ve wanted to develop for a while.

Because I don’t think our relationship with travel begins when we’re ready to book a holiday, and I certainly don’t think it ends when we get home either.

Sometimes we’re researching… Sometimes we need an answer… Maybe something has changed and we need to know what it means… or maybe we’re interested in another country or culture… And sometimes we’re sitting at home with absolutely no intention of booking anything and simply find ourselves dreaming about somewhere else.

I’d like Voyantra to have something for all of those moments.

I want to give you destination guides and practical travel advice. We’ll also cover relevant travel news and, importantly, try to explain what that news actually means for you, the traveller, rather than simply repeating an announcement.

Hopefully there’ll be inspiration, discoveries, opinions and conversations for all.

But I also want there to be stories… Real ones.

Because behind every booking reference, hotel room and boarding pass are people. And often the things we remember most about travelling aren’t the things that appeared in the brochure.

They’re the unexpected moments. The people we met. The things that went wrong and became funny afterwards. The places that surprised us. The experiences we shared with the people we love.

I’ll be sharing some of mine… And as Voyantra Holidays grows, I’d love this eventually to become somewhere other travellers share theirs too, and if you want I can publish them here.

More Than Somewhere to Book

Of course, Voyantra is a travel business.

If you find somewhere that captures your imagination, I’d love the opportunity to help you get there. But I want it to become more than somewhere you visit only when you’re ready to spend money.

If you leave Voyantra knowing something you didn’t know before, feeling more confident about travelling, discovering somewhere you’d never considered, joining a conversation or simply dreaming about where you might go next, then there was a reason for you to visit… And if I have helped you then I’m grateful.

And perhaps one day, when the time is right to turn one of those dreams into a holiday, you’ll know where to find Voyantra Holidays.

There is still a great deal I want to build. When I look at Voyantra today, I feel proud of what has been created from a moment in my life I hadn’t planned for. I’m sometimes surprised by how far the original idea has developed and excited by how much more there is still to build. I’m determined to see where it can go, and yes, there’s probably still a little bit of me that has something to prove.

Most of all, though, I’m enjoying building it.

Because after years of helping other businesses tell their stories and achieve their goals, I’m finally building something that combines the experience I’ve gained throughout my career with something that genuinely inspires me to enjoy life.

And I’d like to bring other people along for the journey.

Daniel Smith
Founder, Voyantra Holidays

Luxury Holidays, Effortlessly Yours.