ABOUT US
My name is Graham Elsom and I have been addicted to travel since childhood.
I am about the same age as Tony Wheeler, founder and owner of Lonely Planet travel guides and we are both from Melbourne, Australia. Tony Wheeler started travelling around Asia at exactly the same time as me. He was smart. He started writing travel guides and look where he is now! I went into the travel agency business as an Assistant Messenger for the legendary Thomas Cook & Son back in 1962 and whilst I haven’t made a lot of money like Tony, my career choice has been the fulfilment of a childhood dream.
By the age of twelve or thirteen I had already developed a passionate desire to travel. I hungrily devoured and collected travel brochures and whenever I saw an ocean liner tied up at Station Pier in Melbourne, I was green with envy. I wanted to go where those ships were going.
In conjuction with my younger brother, we even planned small-group adventure tours to the remote corners of Australia, long before the first of many such operations got underway.
Long story short. After my initial few years working for Thomas Cook & Son and the Dutch company, Royal Interocean Lines, in Australia, I found myself out of work in Hong Kong in 1978. This prompted me to open my own travel agency, Concorde Travel.
It all seems such a very long time ago, but the business was successful and I still enjoy travel consulting as much now as I did at the very beginning. I closed Concorde Travel in 2016 and joined one of Hong Kong's oldest and largest travel agencies, Jebsen Holidays, as Honorary Advisor. Whilst the internet has totally transformed the travel business and in many respects has ruined travel in my opinion, I still enjoy assisting people to plan their travels.
If asked to name just one standout from my long travel consulting career, it would have to be my interest in "hotels/ places to stay". Accommodations have always held my special interest.
This is the reason this website came into being. It is a catalogue of my very own list of unique hotels. You’ll find that some are six-star luxury, while others are as basic as you can get, meaning a night on the floor of a monastery and a line-up for a communal shower in the morning.
All of the listings share one thing in common, they are unique, either by history, or location, or architecture, or story or just because they offer a genuine local ambience. All are certain to appeal to those travellers who want to come away from their journey with the feeling that they have captured the very essence of the place visited.
It is obviously an on-going labour of love and my list of unique hotels is constantly being updated, added to, or even, on occasions, subtracted from, if the certain indefinable "extra" that makes a property stand out from mundane ‘cookie-cutter’ style hotels, is no longer there.
Let your eyes wander over my unique collection of hotels and hopefully this will whet your appetite to travel to destinations that are more off the beaten track, whether it be an enchanted location overlooking a pristine beach, an exquisite rice-terraced valley, or a breath-taking view of an historic site. You might even find a quiet haven in a bustling city, a place to relax and contemplate, during a heavy round of business appointments.
“Tailor–made” is not a word automatically associated with travel, but that is exactly what I and my team of travel professionals offer; individual, tailor-made travel arrangements, designed to suit the particular needs of the traveller looking for something different, something special.
Whatever your needs, we at Jebsen Holidays can assist in fulfilling your dreams.
Graham Elsom
Honorary Advisor
Jebsen Holidays Limited
HONG KONG