A look back on 2020 - Byway’s founding year
2020. A year like no other, and the one in which Byway was born. We founded Byway this year to help more people discover the joys of travelling through the world rather than flying over it. As the year of the pandemic draws to a close and a year of large-scale vaccine rollouts dawns, I’d like to thank you for your support of Byway and our sustainable travel mission and share some of the progress we’ve made in the ten months since we were founded. We’re very much looking forward to whisking many of you away on amazing flight-free adventures as the travel landscape opens up again and have some amazing new European routes in the pipeline, which we can’t wait to share. Happy new year!
Cat, Founder of Byway
We founded Byway in March as the UK’s first lockdown was announced, and launched our first trips as the lockdown lifted in July. Since then we’ve helped many of you with escapes away from the crowds (as restrictions have allowed) and are delighted to have received 5* reviews across the board. You can meet a few of our earliest customers through the pictures they’ve shared below of their Byway holidays this year.
We’re proud to have been certified a Pending B Corporation, which means we’re joining the likes of Patagonia and over 2,700 other companies across the globe to make a positive social and environmental impact in the world, and to have been featured on the front page of Guardian Travel and in the Times list of top family holidays for 2021. We’ve been able to invest in our technology despite the challenges posed by the virus thanks to the government funding we won from Innovate UK’s Sustainable Innovation Fund. This year we’ve bonded with ABTA to ensure all of our holidays are financially protected with unique stays included as standard, and launched an invite-only membership for exclusive holidays and slow travel nights in as a thank you to our earliest supporters.
A huge thank you from the Byway team for your support this year! 2020 has seen us building Byway remotely with our team spread across the UK, Switzerland, France, Germany and Australia. This photo was taken on the one day of 2020 that Cat, Serafin and Lizzie managed a day together at the office between lockdowns ❤️
We are so pleased to have had such success this year and to have discovered such enthusiasm for our slow travel ethos and our vision for a sustainable travel future amongst customers, partners, and journalists alike. Thank you all. Bring on a post-vaccine world of slow travel and exploration later in 2021 - we can’t wait to join you in dreaming up your upcoming adventures!
