About Jamie Wake
At the heart of Jamie Wake Travel is, unsurprisingly, Jamie Wake - but this is not a typical business-owner story.
Jamie’s journey is one of resilience, reinvention and refusing to follow the crowd. His background spans customer service, hospitality, the arts, community engagement and travel, all of which have shaped the way he approaches business, supports people and helps customers experience the world.
Today, Jamie leads Jamie Wake Travel and a growing family of specialist travel brands, including The Independent Travel Consultants, Wide Awake Holidays, Awake & Wander Luxury Travel, Awake in the Wild, Awake at Sea and Holidays to the Maldives.
However, Jamie did not build a travel business around targets, pressure or hierarchy.
He built it around people.
From redundancy to reinvention
Like many people who choose a new path later in life, Jamie’s move into travel followed a major turning point.
Redundancy could have been a setback. Instead, it became an opportunity to reconsider what work, success and purpose should look like.
Jamie began with a simple but important question:
What would happen if we created a travel business that genuinely cared about people?
That question became the foundation of Jamie Wake Travel.
The aim was never simply to sell holidays. Jamie wanted to create a business that listened carefully, offered honest advice and treated every customer as an individual rather than another booking reference.
As the business developed, that same philosophy led to the creation of specialist travel brands designed around different travellers, interests and communities.
The Jamie Wake Travel family
Jamie Wake Travel is the main travel agency at the centre of the wider brand family. It helps UK travellers plan holidays with personal service, practical advice and support before, during and after travel.
Bookings are made through Jamie Wake Travel, with ATOL protection where applicable and other financial protections depending on the supplier and booking arrangements.
The wider family includes:
The Independent Travel Consultants
The Independent Travel Consultants supports people who want to build their own travel businesses with the backing of Jamie Wake Travel.
Jamie created it as an alternative to large and impersonal travel-homeworking organisations. Its focus is on practical training, supportive systems, supplier access, community and helping consultants create sustainable businesses around their own lives.
Wide Awake Holidays
Wide Awake Holidays was created to help LGBTQ+ travellers find holidays where they can feel genuinely welcome.
Its guiding belief is simple: sometimes “gay-friendly” is not friendly enough.
The brand combines inclusive travel guidance with personal holiday planning, helping travellers look beyond marketing labels and consider how welcoming a destination, resort or experience is likely to feel in practice.
Awake & Wander Luxury Travel
Awake & Wander focuses on luxury travel that feels personal, thoughtful and individually designed.
Rather than treating luxury as a particular hotel rating or price point, the brand looks at what makes an experience feel exceptional to the individual traveller. That might mean privacy, remarkable service, a once-in-a-lifetime itinerary or simply having every detail handled properly.
Awake in the Wild
Awake in the Wild is dedicated to wildlife holidays, safaris, nature-led journeys and responsible animal experiences.
The brand helps travellers compare destinations, reserves, lodges and itineraries while considering animal welfare, conservation and the effect tourism can have on wildlife and local communities.
Awake at Sea
Awake at Sea helps UK travellers navigate the increasingly complicated world of cruise holidays.
Its guidance covers cruise lines, ships, cabins, fares, itineraries, drinks packages, gratuities, flights, transfers and pre-cruise arrangements. The aim is to help each traveller choose the cruise that suits them rather than simply recommending the most heavily advertised option.
Holidays to the Maldives
Holidays to the Maldives focuses on one of the world’s most distinctive and frequently misunderstood destinations.
The brand helps travellers understand the practical differences between Maldives resorts, including transfers, island locations, meal plans, water villas, house reefs, adults-only options and multi-island itineraries.
Travel experience and expertise
Jamie combines professional travel-industry knowledge with personal travel experience and an understanding of the decisions customers face when planning a holiday.
His own travels have include safaris across Africa, extensive travel across Europe, the United States and Canada. One of the standout experiences was seeing the landscape of the Masai Mara from a hot-air balloon during the migration.
That journey helped shape Jamie’s interest in wildlife travel and the importance of planning an itinerary as a complete experience rather than treating each hotel or destination as a separate component.
His professional work covers a broad range of travel, including:
- Tailor-made and multi-centre holidays
- Wildlife holidays and safaris
- Maldives resort selection and island transfers
- Cruise lines, ships, cabins and fare choices
- Luxury and experience-led travel
- LGBTQ+ and inclusive travel
- Package holidays and financially protected arrangements
- Supporting independent travel consultants
- Travel-business operations, marketing and customer service
Jamie does not claim to have personally visited every destination, sailed on every ship or stayed at every resort featured across the websites.
Instead, his approach is to separate genuine first-hand experience from professional research, supplier information and practical travel-industry knowledge. Where information is based on research rather than personal experience, it should be presented honestly.
A founder who remains involved
Jamie is not hidden behind a brand name, management team or glossy brochure.
He remains actively involved in the businesses he has created, from supporting travel consultants and developing training to researching destinations, improving systems, building supplier relationships and helping shape the content published across the websites.
He is also closely involved in the development of new tools designed to make travel planning clearer for customers and more manageable for consultants.
His approach is straightforward: people tend to do their best work when they feel supported, trusted and understood.
That belief influences how Jamie Wake Travel works with customers, consultants, suppliers and the communities its brands serve.
Travel advice without the hard sell
Jamie believes useful travel advice should help people make better decisions - even when that means explaining why a particular holiday, hotel, cruise line or destination might not suit them.
The websites within the Jamie Wake Travel family are intended to answer the practical questions that are often missing from glossy brochures and generic travel articles.
That means discussing matters such as:
- Who a hotel, resort or cruise is best suited to
- Who may be happier choosing something else
- The practical effect of different locations and transfer arrangements
- What is and is not included in a fare or package
- Common mistakes travellers make when comparing holidays
- The difference between marketing language and the actual experience
- Costs, restrictions or compromises that should be considered before booking
The aim is not to make every option sound perfect.
It is to help travellers choose the option that is right for them.
How Jamie approaches published content
Articles carrying Jamie’s name are created to provide helpful, practical and clearly explained travel guidance.
Depending on the subject, content may draw upon:
- Jamie’s first-hand travel experience
- Professional travel-industry experience
- Official government and tourism information
- Tour operator, airline, cruise line and accommodation information
- Supplier training and trade resources
- Current destination and competitor research
- Questions commonly asked by travellers and travel consultants
Research and drafting tools, including artificial intelligence, may assist with parts of the content-production process. However, the intention is that published advice should be reviewed, shaped and approved by a person rather than being presented as unchecked automated content.
Important details such as entry requirements, prices, schedules, resort facilities and supplier terms can change. Readers should therefore confirm time-sensitive information before travelling or completing a booking.
Inclusion and community
Jamie’s values extend beyond the holidays his businesses arrange.
He believes travel should feel welcoming, respectful and accessible. That belief is reflected particularly strongly in Wide Awake Holidays and in his wider involvement with Pride and community events.
Jamie has supported and helped organise Pride activity within his local community and continues to advocate for more meaningful inclusion within travel.
For Jamie, inclusion is not simply about adding a rainbow to a marketing campaign.
It is about listening to people, understanding their concerns and recognising that different travellers may experience the same destination very differently.
Supporting independent travel consultants
Alongside his work with travellers, Jamie supports people who want to create businesses of their own through The Independent Travel Consultants.
He understands what it feels like to begin again, to question whether a new venture will succeed and to build something without having every answer from the beginning.
That experience influences the support provided to consultants.
The objective is not to pressure people into joining or promise effortless success. It is to offer realistic training, useful systems, supplier access, community and guidance for people prepared to put in the work required to develop their own customer base.
Jamie’s message to people considering a career in travel is simple:
You do not need to have everything figured out before you begin.
You need curiosity, commitment, care for your customers and the right support around you.
Helping travellers find the right support
Customers can book directly through Jamie Wake Travel or connect with an independent travel consultant from within the wider business.
Consultants are supported by the systems, supplier relationships and operational guidance of Jamie Wake Travel while providing their customers with personal, individual service.
Whether someone is planning a package holiday, safari, cruise, Maldives escape, inclusive holiday or complex tailor-made itinerary, the starting point remains the same:
Listen first.
Understand what matters.
Then recommend the right holiday.
A different kind of travel business
Jamie Wake Travel was created because Jamie believed there was room for a different kind of travel company.
One that supports its consultants properly.
One that treats customers with care.
One that provides honest guidance rather than pushing the easiest sale.
One that values inclusion without turning it into a marketing exercise.
One that can be professional, ambitious and commercially strong without losing its human touch.
Jamie leads with heart, but also with purpose.
His goal is to help travellers make more confident decisions, support independent consultants in building businesses they are proud of and continue developing specialist travel brands that offer something genuinely useful.
If you are looking for a travel professional who believes in people, values honest advice and is not afraid to do things differently, you have found him.
