Roberts, who founded and owns Progressive Travel Recruitment, has created dryHolidays with his husband Tony, which is offering trips to Europe’s first “dry” bed-and-breakfast property in northern Tenerife.
Casa Salvia has been fully operational for the past two months and offers an alcohol-free environment for recovering addicts and their families. The property is already operating at 77% occupancy.
The four-bedroom property will soon be followed by the opening of dryHolidays’ second larger “sober house” B&B, also in northern Tenerife, which will sleep up to 14 people.
“We’re not a rehab, we’re a dry B&B,” explained Roberts, who has now recovered from his own problems with alcohol after undergoing rehab for four weeks during summer 2020.
DryHolidays is also running a series of all-inclusive eight-day guided retreats, offering activities such as hiking on Mount Teide, swimming, yoga, golf, surfing and cookery classes. Guests can also access local Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings during their stays. Prices for the eight-day holidays are from £4,000pp.
“It’s a holiday and educational – it’s for people learning how to live their lives again in a positive way,” said Roberts. “The thing with addiction is that there are no rules and everybody has different methods for their recovery.
“We make sure if there are any triggers, we take them away from that situation.”
As the business develops, Roberts is keen to work with agents in the UK and also plans to use the dryHolidays website as the “TripAdvisor for recovering alcoholics and their families to book any holiday to any destination”.
“I would like to form partnerships with agents,” he added. “I’m planning to talk to consortia and trying to find niche operators, as well as mainstream. It’s very different to what a lot of agents are used to selling.
“We’re the only dry B&B that operates in this way. We cater for people in active recovery or those who have been affected by addiction within their family or friends. Where we’re different is that we give the family equal attention and support.”
Roberts is also employing people and their families who have been affected by addiction within the business.
He said the plan was to eventually “franchise the idea” to properties around the world who can “use this concept” of dry B&Bs.
Roberts added the problem of overcoming addiction was only going to “get worse”, with the UK government estimating that more than seven million people currently show signs of alcohol dependence.
