You know that feeling when you close your laptop on a Friday afternoon and think: I need a proper holiday. Not a weekend away. Not a city break squeezed between two work calls. A real, actual, somewhere-completely-different-from-here holiday.
That’s exactly what Mercury Holidays has been arranging for British travellers since 1980. Over four decades of handpicked hotels, carefully planned itineraries, and the kind of genuine travel expertise that comes from a team who have actually been to the places they’re selling you. The result? Over 70,000 passengers a year, more than 27 British Travel Awards, and a TrustPilot rating that speaks for itself.
Here’s a tour through everything Mercury does and how to find the trip that’s right for you.
Beach Holidays, Because Sometimes You Just Need the Sun
Let’s start with the classics. Mercury Holidays has one of the broadest beach holiday portfolios of any independent UK tour operator, covering everything from the reliably sunny Canaries to the extraordinary blue waters of the Maldives.
The Canaries and Spain: Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Majorca, Benidorm, Costa del Sol. These are the dependable crowd-pleasers sunshine almost guaranteed, excellent hotels, short flights, and the kind of relaxed holiday that does exactly what it says on the tin.
The Caribbean: Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua, St Lucia, Grenada. If you want white sand, turquoise water, and rum cocktails at sunset, Mercury’s Caribbean collection covers the region’s finest islands with the attention to hotel quality that comes from having been curating these trips for decades.
The Indian Ocean:Â Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles. Three very different destinations, all extraordinary. The Maldives for the over-water bungalow experience that genuinely lives up to the pictures. Mauritius for a blend of beach and culture that surprises most visitors. The Seychelles for something genuinely off the beaten path, with a natural beauty that few places on earth can match.
Mediterranean Gems: Cyprus, Greece, Croatia, Turkey, Malta, Morocco. Each completely different in character Greece for ancient history and island-hopping, Croatia for dramatic coastlines and medieval towns, Turkey for grand mosques and bazaars alongside beautiful beaches. Mercury’s Mediterranean range covers all of them with flexibility built in.
Escorted Tours, See More, Stress Less
Mercury Holidays launched its escorted tours programme in 2012 and has since become the fastest-growing brand in the sector which tells you something about how well they’ve done it. These are fully guided, small-group journeys through some of the world’s most fascinating destinations, with everything taken care of: flights, hotels, transfers, expert guides, and the logistics that would otherwise take weeks to plan.
Asia: Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Bali, Sri Lanka, Japan, India, China. Mercury’s Asian tours are some of its most popular, and it’s not hard to see why. The destinations are extraordinary. The cultural depth is enormous. And having an expert guide who speaks the language and knows the back streets changes everything about how you experience a place.
Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Madagascar, Rwanda. Safari is the obvious headline, but Mercury’s African tours go deeper than the Big Five. Gorilla trekking in Rwanda. Desert landscapes in Namibia. The Cape winelands of South Africa. These are trips that stay with you.
The Middle East and Beyond: Jordan, Oman, Egypt, Morocco. Ancient wonders, desert landscapes, and warm hospitality in equal measure. The tour to Petra and Wadi Rum in Jordan has been one of Mercury’s most talked-about itineraries in recent years and rightly so.
Latin America: Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina. Machu Picchu. The Amazon. Iguazu Falls. Patagonia. Mercury’s Latin American tours cover the continent’s greatest highlights with the quality of accommodation and guiding that makes the difference between a good trip and an unforgettable one.
River Cruises, Europe at Its Most Beautiful
River cruising has become one of the most popular ways to see Europe, and Mercury has built a strong and carefully curated programme. The appeal is obvious: you unpack once, wake up each morning in a different city, and watch the countryside drift past from the sundeck between stops. No airports between destinations. No transfers. Just the river, the scenery, and wherever the next port happens to be.
Mercury’s river cruise routes cover the Rhine, Danube, Douro, Seine, and beyond taking in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Portugal, France, and more. These are particularly popular with travellers who want the structure and comfort of a cruise but prefer the intimacy of a river vessel to the scale of an ocean liner.
Private Tours, Your Itinerary, Your Pace
For travellers who know where they want to go but want the flexibility to do it their own way, Mercury’s private tours offer a bespoke alternative to the group escorted experience. An expert guide, a private vehicle, handpicked accommodation but an itinerary shaped entirely around your interests, your pace, and your preferences.
Private tours are available across many of Mercury’s most popular destinations, from India and Japan to Peru and Kenya. They’re particularly well-suited to couples, families with specific interests, or anyone who finds group travel too rigid for their taste.
Solo travel is booming and Mercury Holidays has recognised that single travellers have historically been penalised for it, paying supplements that can add hundreds of pounds to the cost of a holiday. Mercury offers a significant range of No Single Supplement deals across its hotel and tour portfolio, meaning solo travellers pay the same as everyone else and get to enjoy exactly the same experience.
There’s also a growing range of specifically designed solo tours small group itineraries where solo travellers join like-minded adventurers with the social structure built in. The combination of solo freedom and group companionship, without the financial penalty, makes Mercury one of the most genuinely solo-friendly operators in the UK.
Multi-Centre Holidays, Why Choose One Place When You Can Have Two?
One of Mercury’s signature offerings is the multi-centre holiday combining two or more destinations in a single trip. Dubai and the Maldives. Mauritius and Réunion. Bangkok and Bali. Sri Lanka and the Maldives. These combinations are carefully designed to flow naturally, with the logistics handled so you just arrive, enjoy, move on, and arrive somewhere equally wonderful.
Multi-centre holidays are perfect for anyone who finds it hard to choose between destinations or anyone who wants to get maximum value out of a long-haul trip by experiencing more than one place on a single journey. The world is a big, extraordinary place. Mercury Holidays has spent over 40 years figuring out the best of it so you don’t have to do it alone.
Start planning your next adventure at mercuryholidays.co.uk.
