Rising from ruin: how this travel company came back stronger after its demise

They came up with the idea on a first date, built a multimillion pound business based on it, and then lost it all. Flash Pack’s founders, married couple Radha Vyas and Lee Thompson, explain how they brought their travel company back to life

Coming into 2020, adventure travel company Flash Pack was doing well. Having grown every month since its inception in 2014, it had a turnover of £20m and a team of 60. But at the start of that year, they saw the first signs of what was to come.

“January is normally a good month,” explains CEO Radha Vyas. “But we saw bookings start to flatline for the first time in our history.” The decline was so dramatic that the leadership team assumed it was a conversion issue or a problem with the website, but after a two-week investigation they realised bookings were down by 67% in just one area: East Asia. 

We all know what happened next. On 13 March 2020, then-President Donald Trump announced he was closing US borders and the world followed suit, spelling disaster for thousands of businesses, including Flash Pack. “Revenue fell off a cliff overnight,” recalls Vyas. 

The beginnings of business brilliance

To understand the extent of this fall, it is important to understand Flash Pack’s origins. Vyas and her husband, the company’s CMO, Lee Thompson, came up with the idea on their first date in 2012. 

It’s hard to fix the plane when it’s already in the air

They shared a frustration that no companies were catering for solo travellers in their 30s and 40s. They didn’t want to go backpacking with 20-year-olds or on cruises with pensioners. Flash Pack would offer luxurious adventures for individuals with the money to pay for them.

Their backgrounds made them perfectly suited for this. Vyas had a consultancy business, raising money from high-net-worth individuals for the not-for-profit sector. Thompson was a photojournalist whose viral selfie at the top of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer statue gave Flash Pack its first real boost. 

In 2018, Flash Pack was one of the fastest-growing startups in the UK and, up to 2020, it would often see 300% or 400% annual revenue growth.