The company was founded in 2020 by Jones, who has never owned a car, with Byway focusing on flight-free holidays and opting to send its customers away on trains, coaches and bikes.
“This is such a gorgeous way to travel and it’s so fun and interesting, and you do a lot when you travel through a place,” said Jones on Wednesday (3 May). “If more people tried it, they would fall in love with it and do it and tell their friends to do it and this could be a mainstream thing.”
Byway’s goals are all based around sustainability, and include reducing the climate impact of its operations, as well as combating overtourism and boosting local economies.
According to the business’s impact report, 87% of accommodations its customers have booked in the past year were not in a "hotspot location", while 86% of bookings were for non chain-hotels.
“Let’s not forget, sustainability is a much broader set of things than just climate,” she said. “We want to be diverting as much spending as we can into sustainable local businesses, keeping the spending in the places where it is.”
Over the past three years, Byway has grown considerably, sending more than 3,000 customers on holidays and expanding to 23 regions across the UK and Europe – including its most recently launched destinations, Morocco and Norway.
Bookings have also risen almost five-fold in the last year, while 41% of former customers have already booked another trip or referred their friends.
“What we want to be doing is helping people discover this kind of travel and then get home and say, ‘Wow, that was really great, I want to do more of that,’” Jones added.
According to Jones, Byway’s success rate of 98% of five-star reviews is also due to her team of agents, or concierges, who support their customers all throughout their trip.
Customers aged 50-plus, Jones said, are more used to train travel but rely more on the concierge help, while those between 25 and 50 are less used to slow travel.
“[Concierges] often don’t need to do more than admire the photos [sent],” she said. “But just having them there really helps because for most of the customers that are travelling with us this is a really new way of travelling.”
Looking ahead, Jones said Byway was focused on improving its inclusivity – both through making its product more accessible and recruiting a more diverse team.
“We have a commitment that we will make all of our trips available as accessible versions,” she said. “They won’t always look exactly the same but we will spend time, people and energy on that.”
