Guided by Experience since 1963

Horizon is a leading boutique luxury travel company. Founded in 1963, we built our reputation by hand-crafting exceptional journeys of discovery for over 49 years. We pioneered trips from equatorial Africa to the wilds of Labrador, and we did it with a unique sense of service and style that lives on today as the guiding philosophy of our business.

Our mission is: "To design and stage authentic and deeply personal travel experiences that are carefully choreographed to induce a lifelong memory."

Travel Expertise & Insider Knowledge

We believe that sharing expertise is about making choices. We take the bewildering array of choices and distil them into something comprehensible, allowing you to make intelligent decisions about the things that matter and not worry about the rest.

Our planners have been travelling the world for over 44 years in search of hidden treasures, and their discoveries and secrets are built in to every trip. They are always happy to provide you with the insight necessary to make informed choices.

Spontaneity, Serendipity & Flexibility

We believe that our most important role is to create the conditions in which spontaneity can flourish, for it is in this space where the magic of personal re-invention occurs. Enjoying life's pleasures is one of the privileges of a productive and hard working life. We encourage our travellers to go beyond the limits of their normal lives, to slow down, to get lost, to take a risk, to try something new, and our greatest joy comes from seeing them re-invent themselves on every journey.

To walk out the front door is to open yourself up to the delights of serendipity and to embrace the spirit of adventure, but we also believe that you should trust your journey to a company who knows how to do it right.

In terms of value, price is what people are willing to pay for something, but value is what it's worth. Part of the value of a Horizon trip comes from the pixie dust scattered on every itinerary, a dusting of insight, privileged access, and expert local guides that animate the journey. It also comes from the hard reality of costs and our ability to negotiate rates that simply aren't available to individual travellers.

The combination of magic and reality combine to form exceptional value, and we never play the game of over-promising and under delivering. If we don't exceed your expectations, we're not doing our jobs. We guarantee that you get what you pay for - and then some.

Our History

In the spring of 1963, Gordon Fairbank and the late Bernie Taylor, two young men with a shared passion for travel, founded Horizon Holidays. While their initial ambition was nothing more that to temporarily defer the drudgery of a more conventional career, their venture became an almost immediate success. At the time, the combination of creative itineraries, all-inclusive escorted journeys, and quality creature comforts was highly unusual, and it struck a chord in a population just beginning to enjoy the fruits of economic affluence. That first summer, they escorted groups of 30 tour members around North America on the inaugural journeys.

After the early success of the new venture, Gordon and Bernie never looked back. The firm grew rapidly, and in the process pioneered many new destinations around the world, from the plains of Africa to the wilds of Newfoundland. Horizon opened up the Yangtze River with their early river boat cruises, chartered old De Havilands and flew them up into the High Arctic, brought the Oberammergau to North America and ventured into the heart of the great white continent of Antarctica long before it became trendy. In the 70's Horizon launched its infamous annual road shows, a touring travel carnival of sound and light that crossed the entire country, keeping the faithful in touch with the spirit of Horizon and providing a unique opportunity for conducting reunions with old friends.

Through the 80's AND the 90's the business continued to grow, adding staff and offices across the country, opening up new parts of the world to international travel, and introducing new people to the joys of small group luxury travel. An entire generation of travellers experienced their first taste of foreign cultures within the framework of a Horizon trip, and an equally large contingent of guides funded their adventures on the back of leading Horizon trips to exotic places. Although Bernie & Gordon are no longer involved in the business, their legacy lives on in the culture of the company and in the memories of the literally tens of thousands of travellers around the world who have experienced the magic of a Horizon journey.

Horizon today is still a privately-held company run by owners-operators with a shared passion for the business and pleasure of travel.

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