Holidays with added flexibility

Sir David Davies is a British electrical engineer and academic researcher. He was knighted for services to science and technology in 1994. He and his wife Jenna, a chartered surveyor, live in Sussex.

Sir David and Lady Davies became Bondholders about 16 years ago. “We bumped into a friend, who was a Bondholder,” Sir David recalls. “He told us about the Holiday Property Bond, the places he’d visited with it, the fabulous holidays he’d enjoyed; it sounded very attractive – we like self-catering holidays, much more relaxing and informal compared with hotels – and what he was saying made sense. Enough sense, anyway, for us to want to know more. We arranged for a visit from an HPB representative; I remember the sales process – if one could call it that – as most convivial!

The rep was charming, and the opposite of ‘pushy’; we were left to decide for ourselves whether the Bond was right for us. Which, in a way, was what clinched it – that, and the fact that the rep was a Bondholder himself. I had a timeshare at the time – in fact, I still do. It’s lovely, but I could see immediately the additional advantages of HPB, both in terms of choice of locations and flexibility of dates.”

In the decade-and-a-half since, the Davieses have visited, by their reckoning, “at least half” of HPB’s diverse locations across the UK and Europe. Stigliano, the Bond’s 800-year-old Tuscan palazzo near Siena, merits a mention – “We went there with friends” – as do Sibton Park, in Kent; Henllys, in Anglesey; St Brides Castle, in Pembrokeshire; Bena Vista, on Spain’s Costa del Sol (“We’ve been there a few times”); and Buckland Court, in the Cotswolds, the couple’s favourite Bond destination.

“I like the way HPB is organised, too,” Sir David reflects. “The Bond operates according to a set of rules that might at first appear complex. They’re not, actually; but more importantly, neither are they in place to maximise profits. The rules – perhaps better to call them principles – under which the Holiday Property Bond is run are there to ensure that each and every Bondholder gets as much use out of their Bond as possible. And as much enjoyment!”

“And we love the consistently high standard,” adds Lady Davies. “With HPB we never fail to get what we expect – and more.”