From a kitchen table to Dragons’ Den.
Kip is where you find and book the UK’s most characterful places to stay. The opposite of beige.
It started at a kitchen table. An idea between friends Sarah de Vere Drummond & Liz Simpson. A lot of WhatsApp messages, and a hunch that people wanted fewer, better places to stay, not more of them. The kind of places you rarely stumble across yourself, but never forget once you have.
A few years on, we took that idea into Dragons’ Den.
Here’s how we got here.
I have a confession.
I spent years desperate to get out of the UK. I thought the good stuff was always somewhere else. Tropical beaches, far-off places, anything with a flight attached.
Then I started finding it closer to home. A cottage above a Cornish cove. A cabin in a Welsh meadow gone wild with flowers. A shepherd’s hut on a Hebridean island you can barely find on a map. Every time, the same thought: this is in the UK? How did I not know?
And then the one that started everything: if I didn’t know, how many other people don’t either?
It’s an idea that still sits at the heart of Kip. Magic doesn’t have to happen abroad. It’s right here – you just have to know where to look.
Sarah de Vere Drummond, Kip Co-founder
Why we exist.
Knowing where to look is the hard part. Holiday planning – our favourite pastime – had somehow turned into a chore.
You know the feeling. 40 tabs open, a whole evening gone, and every listing starts to blur into the next. Meanwhile, somewhere out there, there’s a cabin painted cobalt blue on a working farm, or a cottage where the owner leaves apple juice pressed from her own trees on the kitchen table.
You’d love it. You’ll just never find it under a thousand near-identical listings. That’s what we set out to fix, with one stubborn conviction: people don’t want more places to stay. They want better ones.
How we choose.
We do the hunting ourselves, and we get a little obsessive about it.
One of us spots a cabin on Instagram over breakfast, someone reads an article and vanishes down a rabbit hole, the group chat goes off at 11pm with “this feels VERY Kip, thoughts?” Then we get forensic: zooming into the bookshelves, clocking the mugs.
We’re not chasing luxury – some of our favourites are under £100 a night. We’re looking for care.
Know of somewhere that belongs on Kip? We’re opening up the scouting circle.
We believe beautiful places deserve to be looked after – it’s part of why we’re a B Corp.
We have over 200 places on the platform now and a plan to help a lot more people find the UK they didn’t know was here.
Explore our hideaways.
Over 200 places, all independent, all handpicked.
List with Kip.
Own a place that belongs here? We’d love to see it.
Become a Kip Insider.
First look at new places, plus member-only extras.
