When a business wins the Isle of Man Newspapers’ Awards for Excellence award for Innovation and Independent Thinking you know that it must be a highly original idea.

Previous diverse and successful winners have included Strix, for producing the world’s first one-minute toaster, and Noa Bakehouse for bringing artisan bread to the island.

Simon Powell’s Big Idea for a business came about quite by accident and yes, he agrees it was all because of a broken heart: ’But the business is so much more than that now,’ he adds.

He’s right: starting with just himself and a couple of staff, the business he started in the Isle of Man two years ago has grown to a team of 20 with additional offices in London and San Francisco.

It all started in October 2014 when Simon booked what was meant to be a dream holiday for himself and his then girlfriend, staying in a luxury hotel in Dubai.

Unfortunately they split up a month later, leaving Simon with a hotel stay, that had cost him £3,000, that he no longer wanted.

He tried emailing booking.com to cancel it and get a refund but was told it couldn’t be cancelled and was non-refundable.

He then phoned the hotel in Dubai and was told the only thing he could do was to get someone else to come with him and change the name on the booking.

’Well I’m not that much of a legend!’ says Simon with a smile.

It did make him think, though.

He realised that, if the names could be changed on the booking, he might be able to sell it to someone else, even if he had to do so at a discount.

He recalls: ’So I put it on my own Facebook page and I put it on eBay but nobody was biting.

’I was selling for about £1,800 - £2,000 and I realised, OK if somebody knew me they might buy it but a stranger’s never going to trust me.

’Nobody even sent me a message.’

He goes on: ’But what opened my eyes was, when I went onto eBay and Gumtree and all these other listing sites, there were tens of thousands of people in my position, selling holidays, and I’m thinking: "Surely there must be a website that allows me to do this because it seems a common thing?"

’Then I started doing more research into it myself.

’I discovered the BBC had written a report in 2012 saying that £10 billion a year is wasted on flights unused so there was definitely a market but there wasn’t a site fulfilling it.’

Having a background in marketing via the internet, Simon thought this might be an idea for a business.

He says: ’I thought: "I’ll give it a go".

I used to run my own little websites generating commissions and made a living from that so I thought it was going to be another of those sites - it might make me a bit of cash.’

A bike fan, he had been to the Isle of Man several times for the TT and in 2009 had come here to live.

He says: ’I love it, it’s a beautiful place.

’I’d never leave the island: that’s why I set my business up here.’

He sold his ’pride and joy’ - a Mercedes G Wagon - and put some money into his new venture along with a friend.

That got him through the first 12 months and enabled him to build a website and take on a couple of staff.

Almost from the start, the new business took off.

Simon says: ’By the end of the first year we had got about 20,000 registered users which again proved the model, proved there was a need for this and that nobody else was really doing it in the way we were doing it.

’We had about 1,000 listings in the first year and a lot of people coming on to buy.’

What Simon was offering on his site, TransferTravel.com, was a peer-to-peer marketplace where people with holidays they didn’t want could find purchasers who could safely buy from them.

He explains: ’To be able to list on our site we need to see a copy of your booking reference, to prove that it’s a true booking.

’You can create the listing and once you’ve done that we go into to it, check the booking and the reference, and put a picture on it to make it look a bit more appealing to the buyers.

’Then the buyer and seller can communicate with each other on the marketplace.

’We don’t get involved in the transfer but we hold the money paid to the seller until the buyer has been on the trip and come back which is a safeguard for both the users.

’All the way along we make sure the due diligence has been done.

’We just take a commission.’

The site now has 160,000 users with 30% of their customer base in the US, hence the office in New York, and they look set to grow even more.

Simon explains: ’We’ve now started to partner with some big travel operators and insurance companies to help their customers so they’re referring customers to us.

’One large travel firm gets 30,000 cancellation requests per day - it’s massive.

’That’s our focus for the future because that’s the biggest way for us to educate people.

’Eighty per cent of travel is transferrable but probably 95% of the population don’t know you can transfer it.’

Simon was recently invited on a panel for the World Travel Market in London, along with the co-founder of Secret Escapes and the vice president of Expedia, talking about innovation and changes to travel.

Talking about his future plans, Simon adds: ’It’s early days but we’ve not done bad for two years.

’Money is not my driver, ideas are.

’I just wanted to solve a problem because it affected me and that’s how it’s grown so it’s good.

’Now, I just want us to be the biggest at what we’re doing.’