Simon Cooper

Cooper entered the travel industry while at university, founding the ski holiday company On the Piste Travel Limited in 1996. The company was later renamed On the Beach Limited and became part of the On the Beach group.⁠[1][2]

On the Beach was created as a sister company to On the Piste, specialising in beach holidays. Cooper started out in a terrace house in Manchester, initially generating leads through Teletext’s analogue service; the business ran on a platform operated by Teletext Holidays, with bookings taken via a call centre. The company took its first booking on May 11, 2004.⁠[1][3]

Cooper has recalled that in the early days he was very hands-on, spending half of his time on the phone dealing with customer enquiries. In October 2004 the company launched its first static website showing hotels, and in September 2005 a website offering dynamically packaged holidays went live.⁠[3][2][2]

In 2007 the private equity firm Livingbridge acquired a majority stake in the On the Beach group for £36 million. The management team subsequently expanded and the share of bookings made online rose; by 2011 about 79% of bookings were made through the website.⁠[2][2]

In 2008 On the Piste was acquired by Thomson (now TUI).⁠[1][4]

Cooper has described the 2009 decision to take information technology in-house as the key move in On the Beach’s development. In 2011 the company launched its own proprietary technology platform with a flexible, modular architecture.⁠[3][2]

In October 2013 Inflexion Equity Partners indirectly acquired a majority stake in the On the Beach group from Livingbridge, in a deal based on an enterprise value of £73 million.⁠[2]

On On the Beach’s tenth anniversary, Cooper said total transaction value was expected to exceed £400 million that year, compared with £10 million in its first full year, and said the company had been profitable every year since it started. By then the company had launched the international brand eBeach in Scandinavia, and he set a goal of reaching £1 billion in turnover.⁠[3][3][3][3]

On August 17, 2015, Cooper joined the board of On the Beach Group plc ahead of its flotation. On September 23 the company offered 52,173,912 shares at 184 pence each, raising £90.2 million and valuing the company at £240 million at the offer price; £6.4 million went to the company and £83.8 million to existing shareholders including Inflexion, the company’s directors and senior managers. After the offering, Cooper and his fellow directors and senior managers retained 21.7% of the shares, while Inflexion held 37.1%.⁠[4][5][5][5][5]

At the time of the flotation, Cooper said that in less than 11 years the company had become one of the UK’s leading online retailers of beach holidays, and that its ambition was to become Europe’s leading online retailer of beach holidays. The shares were listed on the London Stock Exchange on September 28, 2015.⁠[5][5][2]

On May 9, 2017, On the Beach acquired the UK online travel agent Sunshine.co.uk for a net consideration of £12 million. In March 2018 the company entered the FTSE 250 index, and in August of that year it acquired Classic Collection Holidays for a consideration of £20 million.⁠[2][2][2][1]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, On the Beach raised £67 million through a share placing in 2020 and gave all refunds in cash; in 2021 it raised a further £24.9 million through another placing and stopped selling holidays over the summer.⁠[2][2][2][2]

On December 8, 2022, On the Beach Group plc announced that Cooper would step down as chief executive within 12 months and be succeeded by chief financial officer Shaun Morton, with Cooper remaining on the board as a founder director. The announcement noted that Cooper remained a significant shareholder and had increased his stake on August 19, 2022.⁠[6][6][6][6]

Cooper said On the Beach had had an amazing journey in the 18 years since he founded it and that it was the right time to hand over the reins to his successor.⁠[6]

On June 30, 2023, Cooper stepped down as chief executive and became founder non-executive director, with Shaun Morton appointed chief executive the same day. During his almost two decades as chief executive, the company grew from a start-up into one of the UK’s largest online package holiday specialists.⁠[4][4]

On June 16, 2025, The Venture Room released an episode of street interviews filmed in Mayfair, London, in which Cooper was one of the interviewees. He said his original business was in ski holidays, that the bigger business was the online travel agency On the Beach, and that he is now a non-executive director; he said in the episode that the company’s valuation had peaked at about 800 million.⁠[7][7]

In the episode he talked about escaping a model in which earnings depend on one’s time, and about choosing the right “wave” in business, as in surfing.⁠[7][7]

As of the annual report for the 2025 financial year, published in February 2026, Cooper remained founder non-executive director of On the Beach Group plc; he was also a non-executive director and senior independent director of the recently listed The Beauty Tech Group plc, and works with other fast-growing, innovative businesses to help them scale. In May 2026, as founder non-executive director, he exercised long-term incentive plan options granted to him while he was an executive director and retained all of the resulting shares.⁠[4][4][4][8][8]

“Get out of the world of earning money based on your time.” Cooper said that whether one is paid £10 or £1,000 an hour, time remains the limit on income; the better approach is to build a structure in which the efforts of a team generate income together (at 02:22 in the video).⁠[7][7][7]

“It’s like surfing: you have to catch a wave.” Asked about the biggest gap in the market today, he said he had already caught his wave and that young entrepreneurs must decide for themselves which wave is theirs (at 02:43 in the video).⁠[7][7]

On the Beach Group plc: Official website: https://www.onthebeachgroupplc.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

On the Beach: Official website: https://www.onthebeach.co.uk/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]