Aidan - Florida & Worldwide Destination Specialist

Hi, I'm Aidan, a Senior Travel Consultant at Charter Travel, with nearly 30 years in the travel industry - the last 20 of them at Charter Travel

I got the travel bug early, venturing out around the world at 18 and taking in Fiji, Australia and Asia. It was meant to be an adventure before real life started, but instead travel pretty much became real life. Nearly 30 years later, I'm still putting experiences together for clients and still fitting in my own trips around organising other people's!

Florida is somewhere I know particularly well and absolutely love. Universal Studios Florida and Typhoon Lagoon at Disney are family favourites, but there's a lot more to Florida than the parks. We've stayed on Anna Maria Island, camped our way through the Keys, and headed into the Everglades looking for alligators. It's a destination I specialise in and love to help families and couples plan, because you can build completely different trips depending on what you are looking for / who is going! For example, a family trip to Walt Disney World will look totally different to a couples trip to the Gulf Coast. There's so many different sides to Florida and I love that I get to help my clients experience it all.

Another destination in particular has kept pulling me back is Thailand; and I've now visited more than ten times, including a spell running a bar in Cambodia. Travel is also how I met my wife, on a group tour trekking the US/Canada border. We kept going - through Mexico and Belize, a year living in New Zealand, and eventually back to England via Italy and Spain.

Settling down, work and two children haven't slowed us down; we just make sure we have planned adventures together, starting when our first was just 12 weeks old and we headed for Egypt! Luckily, they seem to love the adventure as much as we do, and since then we've travelled as a family to Thailand, Mexico, Morocco, St Lucia, Barbados, the Philippines and India, as well as spending a lot of time exploring the USA; including Boston and Cape Cod, road-tripping through California, and visiting Florida numerous times.

Some places inevitably stay with you more than others. Island hopping around the Philippines is up there for me, as is the complete hustle and chaos of India's Golden Triangle. Our most recent month road-tripping California with two teens in tow will be a hard one to beat too - particularly Big Sur and the National Parks, where some of the best bits were just getting the hiking boots on and wrestling the kids out the door to take in the most amazing views.

After more than 30 years of travelling, I still like holidays that have something to discover in them. That doesn't have to mean backpacking or going completely off-grid, but combining the big sights with the quieter parts of well-known destinations to get the best of both worlds. Whether you're planning a family adventure, a Thailand getaway or a Florida trip beyond the theme parks, I'd love to help you plan something with a real sense of discovery.

Next up for us? A campervan trip through South America, the jungles of Borneo, and bullet trains in Japan - we'll take a family vote on it!

Whether you're planning a family adventure, a Thailand getaway or a Florida trip beyond the theme parks, I'd love to help you plan something amazing and adventurous.