Founder and executive chairman James Lohan is one half of the couple behind Mr & Mrs Smith. His first company, Atomic, organised legendary London parties and corporate events. Working in industries he was passionate about, he moved in line with his target market and co-founded a restaurant and members’ club the White House. Next, naturally, he turned his attentions to boutique hotels. Since Mr & Mrs Smith’s first guidebook was published under the Spy Publishing imprint in 2003, Smith has grown under James’ entrepreneurial eye from a labour of love to a multi-faced boutique travel provider. The introduction of an online booking service in 2005 and an in-house reservations team in 2006 shifted the business in an exciting new direction. The company has developed a three-tiered membership programme which includes a full travel and lifestyle concierge service, and has attracted over 75,000 active members. Latest projects include launching the Smith brand in the USA and opening an office in Australia to expand into the Asia-Pacific region, as well as introducing a 24-hour telephone booking service for luxury travellers worldwide.

Founder and CTO Tamara Heber-Percy, co-founder of Mr & Mrs Smith, graduated from Oxford with a degree in languages – which has proven vital in helping take Smith around the world. After growing up between Ibiza and Shropshire, her first job took her to Brazil to launch a new energy drink. Since then, she has worked as a marketing consultant for brands such as Ericsson, Honda, Unilever and Swissair, and then in business development for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at one of the UK’s top marketing agencies. She left the corporate world in 2002 to head up her own company, The County Register – an exclusive introductions agency– and to launch Mr & Mrs Smith. Combining travel expertise with cutting-edge technological knowledge, Tamara has been the architect behind the development of Mr & Mrs Smith’s e-commerce-enabled website, and has masterminded an array of technical integrations with bookings engines and content feeds to high-profile affiliates, as well as maximising SEO, introducing consumer-generated content and co-ordinating the launch of the Smith Travel Blog.