About Stubborn Mule Travel

Our fundamental philosophy is that travel is not only possible with children, but that it can be exciting, rewarding and fun. There is something about seeing the wonder on your child’s face as they spot their first animal in the wild, or their thrill at running down a giant sand dune that warms the cockles of every parent’s heart.

That said, you do need to ensure that your holiday is designed with children in mind. They won’t thank you if your itinerary has endless one-night stops and becomes a blur of unpacking and re-packing. Nor will they want to visit every single historical site, one after the other, or spend day after day on long ‘are we nearly there yet’ walks.

We believe that a really great family holiday will usually include a mixture of key ingredients: adventure, relaxation, culture, beach, delicious food, swimming pools, beautiful views and more. A really great family holiday company will know how best to combine these; the magical alchemy that brings it all together so that you have just the right balance of adventure and relaxation. Of stimulating new experiences, thrilling activities and time to just be together as a family.

More than a holiday

As one of our recent reviewers has said:

“The very best bit of all about our holiday was having the kids all to ourselves. We wanted an adventure where the five of us could reconnect properly after a really busy school year – and you delivered!! Reflecting back, I think that this is a massive Stubborn Mule USP. You offer not just a holiday, but the kind of family time that is actually pretty hard to find these days.”

At home, the kids sleep late in the holidays, but in Costa Rica, they were up at dawn, ready for another day of adventure. Every day was packed with fascination and thrills and we honestly loved every single second. Every night we went to bed and pinched ourselves; we adored not only where we were but the feeling of being so tightly tied together as a five – just like when they were little. It was completely magic in every way, and we can’t thank you enough.”

Real expertise

So, let’s start with the basics. When booking a holiday with Stubborn Mule, you can take some things as a given; as a family specialist, we know what the weather will be like in each destination during each school holiday. We know the best countries for toddlers and the best for teens.

We also know the minimum age for each activity, and how many you can and should fit into a day. We know the right balance between adventure and relaxation, how to guarantee connecting rooms and whether you should travel by boat, bus, camel or canoe.

The reason that we know all of this is that we’ve done it ourselves with our own children. And we will bring this expertise to bear in creating a bespoke itinerary for your family. We have travelled the length and breadth of our destinations looking for hotels that work for families and activities that your children will love, many of which you could never find in a guidebook or arrange by yourself.

We will bring this knowledge and experience together to design an itinerary for your family, ensuring that you get the most out of your valuable holiday time.

Genuinely outstanding customer service

In addition to our experience in arranging uniquely memorable family holidays, our customers also return to us time and again because of the service we provide. We genuinely believe that this is second to none.

From your first contact with us (when a real person will pick up the phone after no more than a couple of rings), we are here to provide support and advice. Whether it’s a last-minute question about what shoes to pack or ensuring reliable WiFi to receive A-Level results, we’re always on hand to help.

24-hour care

One of the reasons you book with an established tour operator is to ensure that everything goes right. But with the best will in the world, and despite the most thorough preparation, it’s always possible that something might go wrong. Flights can be delayed, unexpected weather patterns can blow through, there might be an emergency back home and so on. This is where we come into our own, because we are on hand to provide support.

Before you travel we will give you our 24-hour UK emergency number and the 24-hour local emergency number for our partners in your destination. This gives you peace of mind so that you know you have someone to call if the need arises. You can also be absolutely confident that whoever answers the phone will know what to do; they will be experienced in solving even the most unusual problems and will be able to provide you with advice, support and assistance until the matter is resolved.

Parent to parent travel tips

Our team are very well travelled, both individually and with our families. This means that any question you might have is one that we ourselves will have had at some point in the past.

If you are worried about getting malaria tablets into your child, we will advise you to take a tub of Nutella and hide the tablet in a spoonful every morning. If you aren’t sure how many overnight stops are okay when travelling with the grandparents, we will tell you what worked for us. If you are baffled by the GP surgery giving you a choice of whether to have some of the more unusual vaccinations, we can’t give you formal medical advice but we can tell you what we have done in the same situation.

Stubborn Mule was first conceived of in the mountains of Northern Laos… the views were just gorgeous, our road descending in long looping bends down to the valley floor, the jungle tumbling down the hills all around us. My daughter was roaring with laughter on the back of my bike, shrieking ‘Hold onnnnnnnnnn’ as we gathered speed, the wind whistling through our helmets on the long descent down the mountain.

Exhilarated, we reached the bottom and collapsed in a heap in a small bamboo shelter on the side of the road, next to Daddy and brother, who this time (and this time only!) had beaten us.

‘That was amazing!’ panted Sam.
‘Let’s do it again,’ gushed Meg.

Mike (Daddy) and I looked at each other. This was what it was all about, the family, travelling, fun and adventure. My mind began whirring. Surely other people would enjoy this too? Surely this was the kind of family holiday that our friends would like? Stubborn Mule Travel, the idea, was born.

Stubborn Mule Travel became a reality

Fast-forward several months, noses to the grindstone, and in mid-2011 Stubborn Mule Travel became a reality. Since then, we have gone from strength to strength, moving from the kitchen table to a small office, and now to a much larger office in the middle of the Suffolk countryside.

Now with a team of more than 26 travel enthusiasts and experts we have an enviable amount of experience and there are very few places on our huge world map that one of us hasn’t been to. From Alaska to Australia and Zimbabwe to Zagreb, we’ve pretty much covered it all.

Nothing comes straight out of the box with Stubborn Mule. We know that every family is different, and before we start designing a trip for you, we will make sure that we understand the mechanics of your family; what activities you enjoy, the type of accommodation that works for you, your budget and so on.

We have a bank of sample itineraries (such as those on our website) for you to look at, but these are intended as a starting point. They give you an idea of the kind of thing we can arrange, and that other families have enjoyed, but then we will tailor the holiday for you.

If you have all had a busy year and want plenty of time for relaxation, we can increase the amount of time on the beach. If one of your kids has been excited about something they’ve learned about in history or geography, for example, let us know, and we can see if we can weave in a relevant activity.

You can make as many tweaks and revisions as you need in order to ensure that we get it just right, and we won’t let you sign on the dotted line until you are 100% happy with your proposed itinerary.

At this point, we will take a 30% deposit to confirm your holiday and will then collect the balance two months before departure. We’ll then send you your detailed trip notes. These contain your final itinerary as well as lots of helpful advice on tipping, what to take, books to read and so on.

In each of our destinations, we work closely together with a partner company who are responsible for much of the day-to-day running of your tour. We will be responsible for designing your itinerary and picking your hotels, but they will actually make the hotel reservations, arrange the correct-sized transport, book (our hand-picked) guides, and so on. Most are locally owned and all are locally run, and they are based in an office in the destination. This means that in the unlikely event of a problem, you have people on the ground to provide complementary assistance to that provided 24 hours in the UK.

What this means in practice may vary from one destination to another, depending on local conditions, but a common theme is that wherever possible, we try to use locally-owned services (hotels, guides, restaurants etc) to ensure that as much money as possible stays in the destination. We also deliberately seek out local partners who share our philosophy and our desire to practice low environmental and social impact tourism.

This not only means that our travellers are able to undertake their holiday in a responsible manner, but also inevitably means a warm welcome from local people whose traditions and environment are being respected. We are strong believers in the fact that tourism can and should be a win-win situation for both travellers and locals alike.

If you would like more details, please have a look at our Responsible Travel Policy or call us.

We are members of the Travel Trust Association (TTA), a trade association of Travel Agents, Tour Operators and Travel Organisers that operate trust accounts in order to provide financial protection for the consumer. The TTA are part of the Travel Network Group.

All Payments made to a TTA Member (whether by card or bank transfer) are paid into a specially designated trust account. Your money remains in the Trust Account and is supervised by an appointed trustee who is either a banker, chartered or certified accountant, or a solicitor. Both Stubborn Mule Travel and the trustee are required to authorise payments from the trust account.

The financial protection provided by the TTA covers every service that you have booked with Stubborn Mule. It involves two aspects, firstly, the Trust account operated for your benefit. The money may only be released from the Trust to pay for the services that you have booked. Secondly, there is further protection in the form of a guarantee; the TTA will guarantee the financial obligation of its members to repay such sum to you up to a maximum for any one passenger of £11,000. So if you paid £2,000, the TTA guarantees to reimburse the loss of the £2,000, where the funds are not available for you from the Trust Account.

Therefore, the combination of the Trust Account and the guarantee ensures that all the money that you have paid is safely protected.

When you make a booking, you will be supplied with a guarantee certificate which provides proof of the financial protection being offered.

See the Travel Trust Association website for further details or to verify our membership. Our membership number is Q0176.

We also have ATOL certification, number T7608, which means that the flights and flight-inclusive holidays on this website are financially protected by the ATOL scheme. You can find out about how ATOL protection works on the Civil Aviation Authority website.