Virgin Holidays' headquarters are in Crawley, England. Seven other offices are located in
Canada and the
United States. In September 2008, Virgin Holidays launched a partnership with Herbert Ypma's HIP Hotels to create Virgin Holidays + HIP Hotels, a bespoke tour operator providing holidays to luxury and boutique hotels around the world. This partnership has now ended and HIP Hotels has since been acquired by a private equity firm. On 18 December 2008, Virgin Holidays acquired the assets and brand name of
Travel City Direct from
XL Leisure Group, which collapsed in September 2008. Travel City Direct has now been merged into the Virgin Holidays brand. Nearly a year later, on 15 December 2009, Virgin Holidays announced that it had bought the small independent tour operator, Bales Worldwide. Virgin Holidays has a network of retail concessions throughout the UK in
Next. These are supplemented by several standalone shops. In 2015, Virgin Holidays left their long standing home at The Galleria and moved to Aeronautics House close to Virgin Atlantic. Initially announced as a temporary move whilst the Galleria was refurbished it was later announced that Virgin Holidays would move into a newly built building, the Leonardo Building, with Virgin Atlantic. In November 2019, Virgin Holidays established Orville Richard Burrell (
Shaggy) as their Chief Caribbean Officer.
Virgin Holidays Cruises Virgin Holidays Cruises is a company owned by
Virgin Group and is part of Virgin Holidays, headquartered in
Crawley. The company specialises in package deals with cruises provided by other cruise lines. The company was established in 2000 as
Fast Track Holidays and was acquired by Virgin Holidays for an undisclosed sum in 2007. At the time of the Virgin takeover the company had 80 employees. The company name was officially changed to Virgin Holidays Cruises Limited on 15 June 2009. ==Environmental research==