Flash Pack offers over 50 trip destinations and a global community of Flashpackers connected by lifelong friendship.
Radha Vyas, CEO and co-founder of Flash Pack, says it’s every company’s dream to crack the US market — despite "scary" advice the travel operator received as it aims to create 1 million friendships across the globe.
The British-founded company specialises in adventure trips which match solo travellers in their 30s and 40s and, since 2019, the US has represented Flash Pack’s biggest opportunity “because our model works really well there.”
“Most of the advice we received when we first started was that America is where travel companies go to die but we've managed to crack it so that was a huge relief," reveals Vyas, who founded Flash Pack in 2014 with now-husband Lee Thompson.
Vyas says that US consumers are less price sensitive and well travelled but happy to hand over their money to a company who can promise an optimised experience. Conversely, the pain point for UK customers, Flash Pack’s second-biggest market, is travelling with strangers.
The founders are no strangers to resilience if their rollercoaster company history is anything to go by. Having bootstrapped the firm from 2016 with £250,000 investment, Flash Pack was one of the fastest-growing startups in 2018. The duo quit their jobs and by 2020 had scaled to £20m in revenue, with a £50m valuation before COVID hit.
“We weren't big or small enough to survive,” recalls Vyas. “We had no VC funding or VCs to turn to, so it was absolutely terrible.
Radha Vyas has led a pioneering pay equality scheme for Flash Pack’s team of international employees. ·FLOYPROD
“All I knew was growth and we were just making hay while the sun was shining. COVID taught me how to be like a wartime CEO where all I knew was how to be a peacetime CEO.”
Inspired by the birth of their daughter, the husband-and-wife team revived the business when the tour operator was brought out of administration in a pre-pack deal by its founders, funded by remortgaging their home.
Vyas says that she gained a positive work-life balance as a CEO from the experience, as they dealt with retrieving customer refunds and coping with a young daughter. Relaunching in late 2021, within two years Flash Pack had surpassed pre-COVID revenues and secured £5m in funding.
“I'm a much stronger CEO now and it gave me real confidence,” she admits. “Now I'm sort of unflappable because anything that happens, it's not thousands of customers stranded across the world and to be grateful for what life throws at you.”
As an Asian woman and female founder, Vyas has experienced first-hand the barriers (a Raconteur report in 2023 showed only 5.4% of UK CEOs are women from ethnic minorities) that still exist in areas such as VC funding, while she has also been criticised for not being “aggressive” enough.
“There are some founders like Oxford graduates who could just raise money off s**t businesses and I'm asked to prove myself again and again, so what we've achieved is so much more amazing,” admits Vyas.
“I have a triple disadvantage. I'm a mother, I'm female and Asian and so there aren't many [CEOs] who look like me.”
Radha Vyas came up with the concept of a game-changing brand that would transform the group travel sector,
However, Vyas says that Flash Pack hasn't been totally constrained by fundraising. “But that's only because I have built a business that can’t be ignored,” she says.
“Our biggest failure became our biggest success because VCs were like ‘Bloody hell, first of all you've got amazing resilience, you're a married couple’ which VCs hate but ‘well, if you're going to get divorced you would have done so by now with everything you've been through, so clearly you both love the business, you're strong founders.'
“It gave VCs so much conviction and if someone told me when we were going into administration that our biggest failure was going to become our biggest asset, I would never have believed them.”
Before Flash Pack, Vyas worked in charity fundraising for Macmillan Cancer Support. She was single, in her thirties, when a friend asked if she would consider going on a group tour. “As a super independent woman, I remember feeling offended,” recalls Vyas.
Radha Vyas pitched the idea of Flash Pack to her co-founder and husband Lee Thompson on their first date. ·FLOYPROD
“But then something resonated with me and I realised there was a massive gap in the market for this super cool, aspirational brand that rehabilitated this notion of travelling with strangers. There's nothing like travel that can create friendship.”
On a dating site, she was then matched up with photo journalist Thompson. Both were living in Brixton and had a passion for business, travel and wine.
On their first date, Vyas revealed her travel idea and their next few dates were spent at travel shows and market research. She says: “We basically started our relationship and the business at the same time, which I would not recommend. It was a super intense journey and we also bought a flat in London that same year.”
With 90 staff, Flash Pack works fully remotely, while its C-suite is now of equal diversity as it strives for brand leadership in the US.
On the consumer side, Vyas says that 85% of its customers make friends and stay in touch while its group dynamic score is 8.9 across thousands of departures.
“We're the only company who actually reject bookings, we reject revenue to protect the group dynamic,” admits Vyas. “We don't allow big groups of friends or loads of couples as 95% of people come solo.
Flash Pack matches people of a similar age with immersive moments of adventure.
"Even if you've met on a Flash Pack trip and you want to book together. We don't allow you to book with loads of other customers because it can form cliques and disrupt the group dynamic.”
After years of manual data, it now embeds AI into its tech, which allows information on a customer’s personality or sleeping preferences to be automated so group tours can be matched.
As if to underline their mission to connect 1 million travellers, Vyas says: “I know for certain we are the only company that does that because we care so deeply that people feel connected and they make friends."
CEO Says: Radha Vyas on
A pioneering pay equality scheme
When we had our reflection time during COVID one of the things I wasn’t happy about the way I led then was hiding our salaries.
When you applied for a job, we would say the salary was competitive on the job spec, people would apply and we would try and get the best deal. The best person for the cheapest price inevitably creates pay gaps.
Even if you're negotiating five or 10% extra on top of your salary it still creates an unequal footing because you're just starting from a lower base than a male counterpart.
As soon as we relaunched, we started pay transparency and now all our job specs have clear salary banding and we don't put employees in that awkward position where we can say 'what are your salary expectations?’ and somebody who's desperate for a job feels super vulnerable.
