About Holidays From Home

Holidays and travel are something that most people take for granted but for a large section of society holidays are impossible. Holidays From Home produces virtual holidays to allow access to the world for anyone who may be unable to travel, either due to illness, disability, financial or environmental reasons.

I believe that just because you can't physically travel doesn't mean you can't explore the world. With virtual holidays you can do just that, using a specially written guide, photographs, the Internet, music, films, books and your imagination. 

Mission Statement

To make the world accessible to everyone who wants to explore it, through a range of interactive multimedia.

The Background

My name's Claire Wade and I developed the idea of a virtual holiday when I was 18 and suffering from severe ME. I was completely bed bound and unable to go on holiday with my family. I was really upset and finding it hard to cope, when I decided that if I couldn't travel literally I would travel in my own way, using my imagination.

My Mum, Anita, and I put together a holiday to Greece, a place I had always wanted to visit. We found pictures to put up round the room, borrowed items from friends who had taken holidays in Greece and thought about things we could do or eat that were associated with Greece.

We had a brilliant week while our family was away, living on feta, olives and Greek yogurt, making mosaics out of coloured paper and paper plates, plate throwing (paper plates again) and paddling in the Aegean, also known as a foot spa.

I realised that I wasn't the only person in the world who could not travel and as my health began to slowly improve I decided I wanted to make the virtual holidays accessible to other people who were in a similar position. Unsure of how to do this, I eventually settled on the idea of setting up a voluntary group and so in June 2006, Holidays From Home was born.

I obtained funding from the National Lottery to run a pilot across East Anglia, which proved so successful that it was time for Holidays From Home to expand. Thus began the next stage of setting Holidays From Home up as a Social Enterprise, aiming to sell the holidays to help cover the costs of producing more ones.

I love my work as it offers me so much variety, from writing the holidays to running a business. I get an enormous amount of personal reward from helping other people and have experienced so much that I never would have if I had not had ME. I feel very grateful for my opportunities and want to do all I can to help others.