About Us
A bit about what we do and the team involved
Here is a list of just a few things you can do on our sites:
- Read the latest reviews on new restaurants, bars, nightclubs, activities, cultural points of interest and hotels all in an easy to use and navigable format.
- Not only can you read reviews, but you can look at photos, watch videos, print out a map, write your own reviews or read someone else's.
- Read our editors tips written by the people who call your trip or holiday destination home.
- Research your trip so you can find all the things you want to see and do very easily, then put these favourites into your trip planner, print it out and take it with you.
- Share your guide with friends and family.
- Book your hotel room, restaurant, car, flight, theatre ticket and other activities all through the site.
- Write reviews and earn points and we all know that points mean prizes.
How did it all start?
Mydestinationinfo.com was founded in 2006 by Neil Waller and James Street who were in their 3rd year of a 4 year business course at Bath University when they decided that they had learnt enough and started their own business – Marbellainfo.com.
"The idea was born on a work placement in London when we were using sites to check out things to do in the evenings and at weekends. When we were off to Marbella that summer and trying to find similar information online we realised it didn't exist and so we created our own site."
Marbellainfo.com grew to be the most successful website for online tourist information in the region and over a few more beers the pair decided they would take the concept across the Globe.
"There wasn't just a lack of information for Marbella, almost everywhere we looked, even for some of the biggest cities in the world there were only a couple of poor sites looking very dated. We set out to fill this gap as quickly as possible."
The team developed a franchising model making it very easy for anyone to run a mydestinationinfo.com site and quickly expanded in their 2nd year to cover 12 destinations. Today in only the 3rd year of business mydestinationinfo.com covers over 50 destinations across the globe and is trusted by more than 3,000,000 travellers a year.
The key to the success of the network being the high level of support our team provides and the fantastic group of local franchisees who run their sites to the highest standards. We hope to continue to provide the most detailed level of destination information for years to come.
The two young entrepreneurs have reached the finals of a number of major competitions such as Online Business of the Year in the StartUps Awards 2009, Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the GBA Awards 2009, winners of the UKFAST 'Travel' Digital Entrepreneur of the Year Awards 2009 and the 2010 UK Trade & Investment London Exporters Award.
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Now To Meet Our Team
Alex Collins - Technical & Design Team Manager
Alex is the team manager at our head office in Marbella, Spain. He has been with the company since it started in '06 and was the company's first employee! His day to day activities include managing communications and tasks within the network and acting as the main point of contact and training for all of the franchisees and the team of designers and developers.
"I'm extremely happy to be working at mydestinationinfo.com as it allows me to learn and teach new things on a daily basis - we have to deal with any job that is thrown our way".
Outside of work he lives in Marbella with his Swedish girlfriend Charlotte. He has a wide variety of interests and makes a conscious effort to improve at least one of these skills every day. Amongst his favourites are playing guitar, graphics & web design, learning new software and torturous physical exercise!
Marianna Gidró - Franchise Support Manager
Marianna was born in Hungary and raised in the tourism industry due to family business. At an early age she already discovered her passion for languages and different cultures, so at 19 she moved to Germany to study tourism and business economics. Having learned the language as a native and done some very creative work at several event agencies during her studies, she was looking for new adventures across Europe. After spending some exciting but also rainy months organizing events in London, the lack of sun and sea brought her back to Spain. Having gained excellent Spanish skills in the capital, she found herself living “la vida loca” in Marbella where she prior attended a language course and fell in love with the city. Marianna then started her 4 successful years as an event and marketing manager at Ocean Club Marbella, the most exclusive beach club on the Costa del Sol. Thanks to her job she got in touch with the team of mydestinationinfo which she now joins taking the newly created role of Franchise Support Manager. Outside of work she loves cooking, skiing, socializing and beach volleyball.
"Ever since I was looking for new challenges because I believe that we are here to be tested, to grow and to learn new things every day. Having met Neil and James was an exciting change in my work experiences and the concept of mydestinationinfo inspired me from the first moment!"
Bruno Larriega - Website Developer
Bruno is the main application developer who joined the team in early 2009. In his short time with the mydestinationinfo.com team he has helped implement some huge changes which have drastically changed and improved the business as a whole. Dealing with thousands of lines of codes, researching for JavaScript tricks, building complex SQL sentences, configuring the server settings is all in a day's work for our super techy.
"The fact there's always something new to do every single day, makes every single day a new adventure" says Bruno.
Bruno, from Peru, is now settled full time in Marbella with his wife Isabel. He loves everything related to computers and technology, as well as going to the cinema and whenever possible eating Spanish churros con chocolate or pescaito frito.
"I love Spain, but if there's something I have to highlight, the Mediterranean lifestyle is definitely up my street!"
Miles Heggadon - Project Manager - Development Team
Miles was born and brought up in the UK. Having spent a year in Brussels prior to going to university, he returned there after his studies, where he spent a further 5 years trying to work out what on earth the European Union was all about. Deciding that this was a thankless task, he moved down to Spain in 2000 where he got into web development and database-driven web applications in particular. Initially linked to the property sector, this work has more recently revolved around the travel industry. As the father of two young children, Miles isn't allowed any outside interests.
"Having first met Neil and James back in 2006", says Miles, "I've been amazed by the amount that has been achieved with the MyDestinationInfo network since then. It's really exciting to be joining the team in what I'm sure will be a pivotal year"
Ulla Risager - Graphic Designer
Ulla is originally from Seoul, South Korea, but was adopted to Denmark when she was 18 months old. Even though her roots are Korean, she considers herself to be Danish. When she was 17, she moved to the United States for a year of exchange and that changed everything.
"I don't think I ever really settled in Denmark when I came back to finish high school. After living a year abroad, I wanted to see and experience more of the world".
Ulla spent the next couple of years restlessly searching for her place...she went to Switzerland to work as a waitress and fell in love with the Swiss alps, the people and their winter sports such as snowboarding. In Switzerland she learned Italian and she soon found herself completely in love with this language! And that's when she decided to study Italian - but as the snow season approached, she got restless. "I could literally feel my feet tripping as winter arrived and I just wanted to go to the mountains, so I went to Italy - at least I could practice the language there !"
Back in Denmark, Ulla took a degree in fashion design and discovered that her main passion was placed within graphics and illustrations. This brought her to Spain where she took a year of graphic design at Marbella Design Academy and upon graduation, she finally landed at mydestinationinfo.com where she is happily learning and gaining valuable work experience.
"I am very happy to be able to contribute and join the mydestinationinfo team, as I think it's a challenging position for me and it's a great concept in general!"
Nick Slade - Graphic Designer
Nick was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but moved to southern Spain at an early age along with his family. Having lived here for just over 11 years and having finished schooling in Marbella, Nick is practically fluent in Spanish and is comfortable to call this great place home.
His interests are in sports, such as tennis, padel, skiing and wakeboarding, and socialising, but mainly anything to do with computers. Towards the end of his study years, still unsure of where he was going career-wise, Nick was introduced to graphic design through a colleague and found an interest straight away. He has now been with myDestinationInfo since February '09 after completing a 3-year graphic design course in Marbella Design Academy and enjoys working with the team as a graphic designer.
Jefferson Stählin - Web Design & Development
Jeff was born and raised in Zürich, Switzerland. He is fluent in French, German and English with a strong knowledge of Spanish. Jeff went to an international school in Zürich to learn English; his parents having the intention to move to the United States someday. This never happened but at the age of 16 he moved down to Marbella in the south of Spain.
Jeff's main interests have always revolved around sports, computers, art and languages, which were elements that he was constantly surrounded by in international schools. Graphic design is one of the latest interests that Jeff has found in computers only about 3 and a half years go. The opportunity to work at mydestinationinfo.com was an opportunity he couldn't refuse as that was the best way for Jeff to really put his mind down to learn as much as possible and more importantly to put it all to use in a professional environment (well, semi-professional).
James Street - Co Founder
James is from the Wirral in the UK but was packed off to boarding school at an early age for not doing a lot of work at home. Too many distractions he claims. He loved his time at school and chose business at the University of Bath with a slight intention of going into property once he had completed his degree.
A few work placements down and no real inspiration he grasped the opportunity to work for himself and has been running the network with Neil ever since. He enjoys spending time with family and friends, skiing on both snow and water and any sort of racket sport.
"Working with mydestinationinfo.com has been a lot of hard work but the stories that only 3 years have brought I will be dining out on for the rest of my life."
Neil Waller - Co Founder
Neil grew up in Guildford in the South East of the UK and even from a young age was always looking for business opportunities, once putting up a sign on the driveway of the family home offering to iron clothes (of course ever the entrepreneur, Neil's intention was for his mum and sister to do the ironing!!!).
A keen traveler, which certainly helps with the day job, Neil also loves anything that goes fast and likes making sure he always has the latest gadgets and tech. On the sporting side it's all about the racket sports or golf, albeit the golf is more about being in the fresh air for several hours, rather than his golfing ability!
Work placements in two leading European Private Equity Companies gave Neil some great experience before embarking upon the adventure which has become mydestinationinfo.com.
John Williams - Website Developer
John was brought up in Leeds and after attending University in Preston and meeting the future Mrs. Williams he moved down to London to see what the bright lights and the big city had to offer. After discovering he had a passion for programming and designing websites he later became part of the team that won a Bafta for the groundbreaking MTV2.co.uk website. He moved to Spain in 2002 and since then has concentrated on creating database driven websites in the Travel and Property sector. His passions are music and dancing badly.
"I'm overjoyed to be working at mydestinationinfo.com and look forward to working with the team to face the exciting challenges ahead."
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