How it started
Trips House began in 2016 in a shared office above a kebab shop in St. Pauli, with two laptops, one printer that never worked, and a lot of opinions about overpriced holidays.
Our founders, Marta and Jonas, had both spent years inside big tour operators. Marta was a product manager, Jonas ran operations, and both kept seeing the same thing: perfectly ordinary trips being sold at premium prices because the packaging looked nice. So they left, rented the cheapest desk they could find in Hamburg, and started planning trips the way they'd plan them for friends.
Ten years later we're a team of eleven (plus one office dog, Nala, who mostly handles morale). We're still independent, still in Hamburg, and still allergic to overpaying for things.
What "cost effective" actually means to us
It's not code for "cheap". We're not going to put you in a hotel with a photo of a swimming pool that turns out to be a stock image from 2009. What we do is cut the stuff that doesn't make your holiday better: glossy brochures, middlemen, markups on markups. The best cost effective travel is what you deserve – and what we'd book for ourselves.
- We contract hotels and transfers directly wherever we can.
- Every package we sell has been visited by one of us. No exceptions.
- Our quotes are the final price. The number you see is the number you pay.
- If something goes wrong mid-trip, you call us, not a hotline queue in another timezone.
The team
Marta Kowalski
Co-founder & Product
14 years in tour operating. Has opinions about ferry schedules in the Cyclades. Strong ones.
Jonas Weber
Co-founder & Operations
Ex-aviation logistics. Once rebooked an entire group's flights from a moving tuk-tuk. Ask him about it.
Priya Nair
Destinations, Asia & Indian Ocean
Ex-hotelier in Colombo. Knows which beach shacks in Thailand are worth the ferry ride and which absolutely are not.
Come say hi
If you're in Hamburg, the kettle's usually on. Otherwise drop us a line or browse where we're sending people this season.