After many years of unsuccessful holidays with our own little boy who is autistic we purchased a caravan and set it up for our son’s needs. We began renting that property to other autism families and the demand was enormous – far more than we could ever accommodate and the concept of Spectrum Holidays was borne.
Since we launched Spectrum Holidays, we have seen demand for our service increase and we are now in the process of expanding our business across the country as quickly as possible to meet the interest from potential guests. We have a number of cottages, lodges and caravans around the UK but the demand for suitable holiday accommodation is huge and we are always looking for suitable holiday homes to add to our website
This presents a fantastic opportunity for you to reach a previously overlooked audience of families wanting to book a holiday.
We launched Spectrum Holidays due to the huge demand we constantly have for our own holiday accommodation. We want to be able offer fantastic family holidays to all the guests that we can’t accommodate ourselves!
We are therefore actively looking for new Spectrum Partners with suitable holiday accommodation around the UK. And the best bit…you don’t have to pay a penny unless we secure bookings for your accommodation so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
We will charge our guests the pre-arranged rates that we have agreed for your property (along with any other terms) The fees will then be passed on to you on a monthly basis.
Any guests that wish to book a holiday in your accommodation will send us an initial enquiry using the “contact us” form on the website. Once we have confirmed availability with you we will take a deposit of £100 (or the amount stated on your own terms and conditions) to secure the requested dates. We then issue the guest a booking form along with your terms and conditions which would need to be completed and returned. It is only at this point that the booking is confirmed.
There is no charge to advertise your property on our website. We will work with you to suitably represent your accommodation on our website and provide our guests with all the information they will need to decide if your property is the one for them. The network of families within the autism community is enormous and this in itself provides us with an unprecedented – and unique way of advertising our services….and your holiday property. Awareness of autism is very much in the public eye and there is a huge demand for what we offer.
All of our guests will have very different needs therefore we could actually take on a wide selection of accommodation types although not all cottages will be suitable for every family. As each families needs are different we will list all relevant information as part of the advert. We even include a description of the lock types, its something we get asked regularly about our caravan.
For your accommodation to be suitable we’ll need to satisfy the following criteria:
Unfortunately, there is a common mis-conception that children with autism are ill-behaved and we have had potential partners worried about this – as a result we like to tackle this concern head on. Children with autism simply see and communicate with the world differently. We have been successfully providing autism friendly holidays for over 3 years with zero issues from the guests with autism that we have accommodated.
Autistic people can sometimes find it difficult to process sensory information around them and often struggle with any change to their normal routine – this can make a holiday, with a change of environment very challenging for them. Any of the senses can be under or over sensitive – or both at different times, and to help regulate that sensory information we use a range of sensory toys which we provide to our owners in the Spectrum Pack. We provide extensive support to the guests before their stay to help their family prepare for the trip. We provide visual support for our families to help them both prepare for their holiday and also give them visuals to use when out in the local area. We are available to our guests 24 hours a day, 7 days a week which makes us the first port of call for any questions or problems our guests may experience. We would only contact you if completely necessary.
Our families do not pose any greater risk to your holiday home or its contents than any other family.
There are around 700,000 people on the autism spectrum around the UK, if you include their families that means that autism is part of daily life for 2.8 million people and all these people go on holiday, we aim to be their first port of call when booking holiday accommodation in the UK.
Our families benefit from accommodation that has been specifically set up to be autism friendly and that is where we come in.
We visit all potential holiday homes and make an assessment of suitability. We provide all accommodation owners with one of our “Spectrum Packs” which contains a wide selection of sensory toys and equipment, we also provide a social story and a selection of visuals that are specific to the accommodation and help support our families on their holidays.
We also provide extensive information on the surrounding area paying specific attention to any autism friendly attractions nearby.
We actively advertise all our holiday accommodation on our website which has the added benefit of being available to the wider autism community across the UK via the hundreds of support groups we are members of. There is no charge for this service – see below for more information of how the money side of things works.