Chris Brown: The internet love affair that led to a fortune

Chris Brown set up his own hotel review site after learning to code in his spare time. Now his online travel agency is turning over £30m.

Chris Brown realised the importance of holiday reviews while working at online travel agency Lastminute.com. The agency "always had people trying to cancel holidays because of what they had read online". The "most frustrating thing" was that "I could never find these reviews because their sites were badly built". Brown decided to set up his own review website, Hotelwatchdog.com. "I didn't start it to make money but to prove a point to all of the bad review sites that were out there."

Unsure of how to build a website, he had to "start from scratch", teaching himself how to code from a £17 book. He spent the winter of 2002 at this and by January 2003 it was ready. He filled the site with his own reviews of "anywhere he had ever been". He also appealed for visitors to contribute. The site was "pottering along", picking up a few hundred visitors every month when Brown met his future business partner, Chris Clarkson. The pair met in a chatroom for website enthusiasts "it was a bit like an internet love story". Not only could Clarkson make the site more sophisticated but he could make more money through 'affiliated marketing'. "It basically meant passing visitors on to holiday firms and taking a cut of the profit if they booked a holiday."

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James McKeigue

James graduated from Keele University with a BA (Hons) in English literature and history, and has a certificate in journalism from the NCTJ. James has worked as a freelance journalist in various Latin American countries.He also had a spell at ITV, as welll as wring for Television Business International and covering the European equity markets for the Forbes.com London bureau. James has travelled extensively in emerging markets, reporting for international energy magazines such as Oil and Gas Investor, and institutional publications such as the Commonwealth Business Environment Report. He is currently the managing editor of LatAm INVESTOR, the UK's only Latin American finance magazine.