Our Founders
(& Senior Trip Designers)
Norman Howe
Norman is an over-educated ex lawyer and itinerant wordsmith who made the fatal mistake of guiding for Butterfield & Robinson (B&R) in 1994. Shortly thereafter, he abandoned all pretense of responsibility and embraced the peripatetic pursuit of pleasure. After decades of nomadic explorations and eight years as CEO, he left B&R to get back to the basics of building companies and having fun, starting with Hosted Villas and most recently launching HV Travel.
Craig Nattress
Craig is an adrenaline junky, serial entrepreneur, gifted raconteur and generally unflappable man of mystery. He also pioneered new destinations for many luxury travel companies, hacking his way through the jungles of South America, before he founded Nattress & Co, a bespoke trip planning company. He did a stint as a partner running the trip planning at Horizon & Co before taking a detour to help Exclusive Resorts build their private travel business.
Chris Mark
Chris left home at 23 for a 5 month, 10,000 km bike trip through Europe and never looked back – mostly because, after that much time on a bike, he could no longer rotate his neck in either direction! Prolonged stops in Burgundy, northern Italy, and Tuscany instilled in him the travel knowhow to fuel a two-decade-plus career in luxury travel, as well as the language skills to order a kir royale or prosciutto e melone without having to point at the menu.
A few of our local experts
(access to the rest comes with membership)
Stejpan
Stejpan is a long time mariner, avid hiker, committed locavore and amateur sommelier. He knows every secret swimming spot along the entire Adriatic coast, and his favourite rite of initiation for newcomers to Croatia is a vertical tasting of Rakija, the famous local brandy.
Valeria
Valerie is a trained pastry chef, dedicated oenophile, master of the art of la dolce vita and expert practioner of la passegiata. She can also get into the Vatican after hours, the kitchen of a Michelin-starred chef over lunch, and various other places off limits to mere mortals.
Marie-Jose
Marie-Jose is a lifelong Francophile, passionate gourmand, literary translator and occasional cyclist. She’s always game to jump in a balloon for a ride over the medieval villages or to set off with the dogs in search of the legendary truffles of Périgord.
Work With Us
(we are always in the market for good people…)
Local Experts
We have two kinds of local experts - those who work as local hosts on the ground to support our members when they are travelling, and those who work as expert trip planners, using their regional expertise to design trips for our members (we also have many who do both!). In our experience, the best local experts are usually passionate amateurs who have an genuine love of their region and a desire to share it with others. We are always interested in building our roster of local talent, so please fill out the form below and we will be in touch if we think there is a fit.
Ambassadors & IC’s
HV Ambassadors are well-connected people with a wide network of potential HV Travel members who are keen to spread the word and make a little referral money along the way. IC’s (Independent Contractors) are existing travel professionals who want to leverage our platform, relationships and trip planning talent to build their business. The way it works is pretty straightforward, assuming that you already have an existing business - your clients become complimentary Explorer members of HV Travel, and you work with us as an IC.