Our story

Built by a parent
who got tired of winging it.

Holiday Windows started as a spreadsheet. A slightly obsessive spreadsheet, built at 11pm after realising the July school holidays were six weeks away and nothing was booked.

Every year, the same problem. School holidays arrive, four times a year, every year, completely predictable, and somehow they still feel like a surprise. Not the holidays themselves, but everything that needs to happen before them. The leave applications, the holiday care bookings, the flight searches, the realisation that Bali in July costs twice as much if you start looking in June.

"I knew exactly how many days of annual leave I had. I had no idea how many days of school holidays I needed to cover."

That's the gap Holiday Windows was built to close. Not a travel agency. Not a generic deals newsletter. A tool that starts from the actual problem, every school holiday day needs covering, and you have a finite number of leave days to work with, and helps families figure out the optimal mix of annual leave, public holidays, and holiday care across all four windows of the year.

The deals came later. Once you know which windows you're targeting and how many leave days each costs, finding genuinely good deals becomes the last piece. We send one email every Tuesday, no noise, no filler. If there's nothing worth booking that week, we say so.

Holiday Windows is free to use and free to subscribe to. We earn small affiliate commissions from providers when you book through our links. That's the whole business model, and we're upfront about it in every email.

What we believe in

๐Ÿ”
Honest over hyped
We don't send deals we wouldn't book ourselves. If the weather is bad, we say so. If a deal has conditions worth knowing about, we put them upfront.
๐Ÿ‡ฆ๐Ÿ‡บ
Australian first
Ningaloo in September is extraordinary. The Grampians in April is spectacular. International deals are great, but so is Australia, and we feature both equally.
๐Ÿ“Š
Data over gut feel
The Leave Planner uses actual school holiday dates, real public holiday data, and honest calculations. No rounding up, no optimistic assumptions.
๐Ÿ”•
One email, that's it
One deal email per week, maximum. We will never sell your email address. We will never send you partner promotions. One email. That's the deal.

Background

Holiday Windows is built and run by a Sydney-based parent with a background in finance and operations. The combination of CA-trained analytical thinking and firsthand experience of the school holiday planning problem is what turned a spreadsheet into a product.

Chartered Accountant (CA ANZ) ยท finance background across professional services, corporate, and higher education
Sydney-based parent navigating NSW school holidays with school-age children
Operated by Finse Pty Ltd ABN 25 696 367 969 ยท registered in New South Wales

Questions, feedback, or deal tips? Email us at [email protected], we read every message.

Ready to stop
winging it?

Join Australian families who plan their school holidays before the deals disappear.