The way holidays are booked is changing: the house is becoming the holiday itself, with location taking second place. New 2026 travel research shows nearly half of British families now take multi-generational holidays together in a single property, a marked swing from hotel-room bookings towards large, self-catered houses that hold grandparents, parents and children under one roof. Demand for architecturally distinctive, large-group houses is no longer niche but is becoming the whole point.
The Rise of the Occasion Stay
One company riding this trend is ARC, a collection of five architect-led houses across the UK sleeping up to 30. Founded during Covid by London architect Tom Leahy, their first property opened in 2022, and the portfolio now stretches from the Camel Estuary in Cornwall to the Peak District. The promise: the finish of a boutique hotel, but exclusively yours.
Leahy explains the mission was born from a simple insight. “Research we did found that adults go on an average of four holidays a year – three abroad and one in the UK – and we set out to try to shift that to a two-two ratio.” The holiday easiest to poach from Europe? The weekend away with friends, where you are not really there to see the place but to spend time together somewhere pretty. “We thought: what is it about French châteaux or Portuguese villas that draws people there?” says Leahy. “We figured out that really it’s a quality difference. They were all en-suite bedrooms, they had been invested in. The equivalent in England was someone's house or a threadbare stately home. Kitchens were designed for staff, not for groups cooking themselves. So we addressed that gap.”
ARC Thorpeness: A Water Tower Reimagined
ARC Thorpeness is set in a tiny Edwardian village on the Suffolk Heritage Coast, built as a fantasy holiday resort by Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie in the early 1920s, inspired by the stories of Peter Pan. Its boating lake, the Meare, has islands named after Neverland; its mock-Tudor cottages were designed for wealthy Londoners escaping the city. ARC’s house here is the village’s famous water tower, Grade II-listed and converted in 1929 by architect William Gilmour Wilson. From the outside it is imposing: five storeys of weatherboarded timber rising high above the Suffolk rooftops.
Inside, it is an upside-down house. The kitchen – Miele everything, double ovens, a vast sociable island – sits four floors up. A cinema snug and yoga studio occupy the lower levels, and the living room crowns the building at the fifth floor, spanning the entire former water tank, with 360-degree views across the village, out towards Aldeburgh and the North Sea. The group is spread across eight en-suite bedrooms, each configured to feel private. There is no master bedroom, so all rooms feel equal. Outside: a heated pool, an eight-seater wood-fired hot tub, a South African braai and pizza oven in the courtyard.
Experiences and the Shift in Booking
On the Saturday evening, a local chef came to cook, organised by ARC, with multiple menu options. The group chose the ‘farmers menu’, with duck magret for meat eaters and sweetcorn fritters for veggies, followed by steak with a parma ham crisp and garlic rosti potato. During the day, they explored the bookshops and local pubs in Aldeburgh, stopping at bakeries like Two Magpies and Lawson’s Delicatessen.
“People tend to book ARC who live within two hours’ drive of the house,” says Leahy. “They’ve found us on Instagram, and it’s the architecture and design that draws them in. There's a real focus on moment-making. The intentional focus on design creates amazing images.” He pauses. “In a way, people are exhibiting who they are via their booking.”
The big group stay has moved away from the budget end of the market towards something more intentional: architecturally ambitious houses with personality, concierge services, and sustainability credentials with real weight. ARC is entirely fossil-fuel-free across its whole portfolio, which for listed buildings is no small engineering feat. The result is a new category of travel: the occasion stay, where the house is chosen not for where it is but for what it communicates about taste, values, and the kind of time people want to have together. A weekend at ARC Thorpeness starts from £3,400.
