Forgot the booming adventure travel market, now there is a new trend chasing its heels - the quest for the quirky, the unexpected and the just plain bizarre.

Launched earlier this year, activity holiday marketplace Vidados was created by Vanessa Lenssen with the help of Gareth Thackeray, the former chief engineer of ASOS Marketplace. The site offers a platform where travellers can connect directly with independent hosts running activity holidays.

But there's been an unexpected and mounting demand since launching for what Vanessa describes as 'the weird and wonderful'.

“We wanted to offer the best range of activities run by local people so there really was something for everyone; a lot of the trips we included we thought would just be a bit of fun.”

“But turns out they've been a total hit. Archaeology in Bulgaria, night photography in Fuerteventura, knitting in Italy, vintage and antique collection in France, singing in Barbados, sugar crafting in Portugal, to cheese-making in France – the quirkier the better it seems.” Lenssen said.

In response to the growing demand for unusual holidays Vidados has launched a quirky holiday guide to save people from the hunting through the site's growing treasure trove of activities.

As well as unusual holidays, Vidados has over 800 activity holidays and 200 multi-activity including tennis, canoeing and cooking, French and paragliding, yoga and kitesurfing and scuba diving and underwater photography.

About Vidados and Vanessa:
Founder and CEO Vanessa Lenssen has 25 years in travel industry; with 10 years solely in the activity holiday market.

Vanessa discovered a passion for activity holidays after learning to kitesurf in a very windy Tarifa. There she had her lightbulb moment realising there might be others out there who could never really relax on holiday unless they switched their brain into 'holiday mode' by trying something new.

She launched learning holiday specialist website GoLearnTo.com in 2007 and in response to a growing demand for activity holidays run by locals, launched Vidados Beta this January.

Vanessa raised investment for Vidados from an impressive group of smart investors, including the co-founder of Secret Escapes, the co-founder of Rentalcars, the CTO of Rakuten Marketing and a former board member of lastminute.com.