The LakeDistrict Hub is a global, national and localised central place for everything Lake District related including hotels, bed and breakfasts, holiday cottages, lodges, caravan and camping in the Lakes. We also feature all types of food outlets including cafes, restaurants, take away and specialty food businesses. If that wasn’t enough, we feature all experiences in the Lake District, from the fells to the Lakes and everything in between and if you are looking for the best shops in the Lake District, we have that covered.
The LakeDistrict Hub aims to become one of the leading Lake District websites with more information than many others to choose from and was set up by a local married couple who have travelled far and wide to over 40 different countries but still find the Lake District the most beautiful destination on planet Earth.
Gareth O’Rourke – Founder
Gareth was born and raised in Ambleside and spent the first 18 years of his life living in this area before meeting his wife Amanda and now lives in Kendal, just outside the Lake District.
Gareth has experienced many sectors, including opening his own retail business when he was 21 within the Lake District, and understands the challenges many independent retailers face in this area. He then went on to work within the tourism industry running the digital marketing departments of what was South Lakeland Parks, which included Limefit Park, White Cross Bay and Fallbarrow Park. He then went on to head up the sales and marketing side of Lakelovers, the largest holiday cottage agency in the Lake District now owned by Pure Cottage Group. He has spent the last 5 years working in Carlisle for CHO as the Director of International Ecommerce and Buying and has helped take the business global and turn it into a £7M fashion empire. While in this role he won numerous awards for both the digital marketing campaigns and the teams that he built. More recently, he was a finalist for Digital Entrepreneur of the Year Award, is a Mentor for Tech Manchester, Speaks on Digital Marketing Podcasts and Interviews and does both business and digital Marketing consultancy.
COVID-19 then hit and he had left his role and wanted to do something that would make a difference and help as many of the businesses as he could within the Lake District and decided to create LakeDistrict Hub. The problem he found was that many of the other leading Cumbria / Lake District websites had experienced teams behind them but the cost of entry was far too high, so they weren’t truly representative of what the whole of the Lake District has to offer. So Gareth decided to use his own savings to build a world class website and have a minimal fee for businesses to be able to advertise on the platform to help showcase the whole of the Lake District, but to also help the Lake District bounce back as quickly as possible once the pandemic eased.
