Spotlight on Associate member Rob Carroll

If you were not doing your current job, what would you be doing?

This is a tough question to start with. You see, I love my job. It has taken me all over the UK, Europe and beyond, broadened my horizons, my knowledge and my understanding of other people and cultures. But if I weren’t at HF Holidays I would definitely be out walking somewhere. For fun I’d be gasping at heavenly scenery from the top of a Lake District fell. And, if I had to choose another job, I’d be your postie because it’s everything that HF is about – active, outdoors and sociable.

Do you have a hidden talent?

I’m a fluent German speaker. I sort of fell into it because I had an amazing teacher who encouraged my interest in languages. My parents weren’t travellers and our family holidays never ventured further than Britain’s coastline (North Wales was the closest thing to going abroad!). So, studying German and at the age of nearly 21 I went abroad for the first time – to spend a whole year in Germany! I think that’s where my thirst for travel came from and I’ve been catching up ever since.

If you could spend a day in someone else’s shoes, whose would they be? Why?

I’d like to time travel back to 1913 and live a day in the life of HF Holidays founder, Thomas Arthur Leonard. He was a visionary and a true pioneer in the travel industry. From the outset HF enabled ordinary people to enjoy the Great Outdoors amidst the camaraderie of like-minded people, in the UK and abroad. The holidays being produced in the 1920s – long before the advent of mass tourism – were way ahead of their time. And as well as forming HF, the UK’s only remaining co-operative tour operator, he helped found The Ramblers Association and the Youth Hostels Association. Our enjoyment of the countryside, now often taken for granted, wasn’t a given back then and for that I feel I owe TA Leonard a nod of thanks.

What is your favourite holiday memory from childhood?

Simple pleasures like hunting for fossils on Filey Brigg or in wet weather losing a bag of ha’pennies in the slot machines. But I’ll return to that holiday in North Wales, which my parents admitted they didn’t enjoy. I loved it. The castles, Llandudno’s sweeping bay, leaving the mainland to visit Anglesey and signposts in two languages. It probably won’t surprise you that I was scribbling notes in the back of dad’s car and came home with a vocab book full of unpronounceable words that – let’s face it – wouldn’t get me very far in Rotherham. Just before the pandemic I guided a German rail enthusiast group around Wales, visiting all of its incredible railways, and fell in love with the place all over again.

What is the best thing about being involved with AGTO?

It’s great to be part of a community in group travel, keeping your ear to the ground of latest trends and understanding what GTOs want from us as associate members and partners in organising their group holiday experiences. Being part of a community with other travel providers, venues, tourist boards and hotels also gives me the opportunity to create lasting relationships and partnerships, brought together under AGTO’s umbrella.

Founded in 1913 HF Holidays is one of the oldest surviving tour operators in the UK and arguably the oldest surviving walking holiday company in the world. Founded as a co-operative, 111 years later HF is the only co-operative tour operator in the UK, providing holidays for its 46,000 members and the wider general public. It owns or manages 16 country houses in beauty spots around the UK, from where it operates a variety of walking, activity and special interest holidays. Additionally, there is a full programme of walking holidays in other UK destinations, as well as Europe and worldwide. It welcomes groups of all sizes and all interests and prides itself on creating experiences that are active, outdoors and sociable.