Today, at 42, Clive Jacobs is the youngest person to have been welcomed into the travel industry's honoured Hall of Fame , joining the likes of Lord Forte, Richard Branson, Billy Butlin and Lord Marshall, to name but a few. Among his many other accolades is a World Travel Market Global Award for outstanding contribution to the UK travel industry.

Jacobs and his former business partners are credited with having revolutionsed the car rental market with the launch, in 1987, of Holiday Autos, the firm which offered the first ever fully inclusive, pre-paid car hire packages.

This year, Jacobs sold his company to the internet lifestyle solutions giant lastminute.com for £43million. He remains Chief Executive of Holiday Autos and is also Vice-Chairman of lastminute.com, joining founders Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman on the board of directors.

It's a long way from the food-halls of the West End , but the journey from rags to riches has not been an easy one.

“Turning an idea into a multi-million pound business doesn't happen by chance,” said Jacobs. “It involves hard work and making sacrifices, at a time when your dreams may be supported by little more than self-belief and a determination to succeed.

"In the early years when I was working to build my first company, I worked through the night as a minicab driver to earn a living. But my motto has always been that if you want something badly enough, you can get it - and I'm living proof of that."

Jacobs left school at sixteen with no qualifications, but, instead, a driving entrepreneurial ambition. A series of jobs followed, including building site labourer, insurance salesman, and - his first job in travel - a messenger for travel agency, during a spell spent traveling overseas.

In 1981, aged 20, Jacobs returned to the UK and joined a flight consolidation firm, selling bucket seats on charter airlines. Within a year, he and two others had started their own flight-booking company, European Airtours.

A few months later, while the new enterprise was still in its infancy, the brainwave that spawned today's multi-million pound business occurred. Ever the entrepreneur, Jacobs, together with his two partners, identified a gap in the market for a company offering leisure travellers pre-bookable car rental for one, all-inclusive price.

"Renting a car was complex and costly at that time," said Jacobs. "People didn't tend to prebook, they would just arrive somewhere and get a car at the airport.

"Rates were exclusive of taxes and other add-ons, and payable in local currency, so were confusing to say the least. Trade commission was based just on the basic rental price, so agents didn't bother to sell car rental, but instead advised customers to arrange hire in the location."

Using the traditional tour operator model as a basis for the business, Holiday Autos started negotiating fully inclusive net rates from small local car rental suppliers and selling the first rental packages through the trade, in British currency.

Said Jacobs: "As well as offering an appealing product for the consumer, we were giving agents the opportunity to earn valuable commission payments on the full amount by selling 'one-stop shop' car rental as a holiday extra, available in thousands of locations around the world."

What followed was one of the fastest and largest expansion programmes the travel industry has ever seen. In 1989 Holiday Autos opened a corporate sales office in Germany and franchise businesses in Belgium and Switzerland. A year later a new corporate sales office was launched in California 'Holiday Autos US Inc' as well as two new franchises in Canada and Scandinavia.

Two years on, with additional franchises and joint ventures in Ireland, Cyprus, Greece and Israel, Holiday Autos was acknowledged as the European market leader in an independent report.

The US, however, was proving a tougher nut to crack. In January 1997 Holiday Autos spearheaded a joint venture with one of America's oldest and best-respected car rental players, Kemwel, to boost its credentials stateside and gain a firm foothold in the US market. Kemwel Holiday Autos was formed. A buyout in March 1999 saw Holiday Autos gain full control of the business and it operated for a further two years. But, in the face of increasingly fierce competition and continually disappointing results, Jacobs decided to pull the plug and sold the company in August 2001. A month later, this proved to be an extremely timely decision.

An important milestone in Holiday Autos' history came in 1995 when, with the assistance of venture capitalists ECI, Clive Jacobs bought out his main business partner. Since that time, he has transformed Holiday Autos from a small but growing company into the well-established, global enterprise it is today, working with some of the most high profile names in travel.

In 2002 - 2003 Group turnover was £158m. The Group operates out of corporate offices in Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK and has joint ventures in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Israel. There are holiday autos agents in a further 23 countries. Today the company also incorporates Holiday Hotels, launched in July 2002, a predominantly web-based operation sold through the trade which offers the independent traveller city centre and resort accommodation in worldwide locations.

The firm retains the pioneering spirit which has been in evidence since day one, when it launched the travel industry's first ever 'lowest price guarantee' pledging to refund the difference if a rival undercut the company's rates.

That same spirit underpinned the decision to embrace e-commerce in the late 90s and develop the direct sell side of the business using the Internet as the main distribution channel, and today it is that spirit which is convincing travel agents that the Internet is a useful selling tool and driving them online.

Jacobs remains at the heart of the business. The company's success is - in no small part - down to his own passion and determination to succeed, and it is his vision and flair which has ensured that Holiday Autos has been at the forefront of innovations in a rapidly changing travel market.

"I am a workaholic," he admits. "I work 14-16 hours a day and even when I'm on holiday I keep abreast of what's happening.

"On a normal day I regularly walk around the offices to sit down with colleagues and talk things over. They know my door is always open.

"The first thing I do when I arrive in the morning is check the previous day's figures," he said. "I leave running the business to the senior management team, but, yes, I'm interested in how we're doing.

Married with a two-year-old daughter, Jacobs said: "I reached the stage years ago when I was comfortable enough to choose to stay at home, or take up golf, but that's simply not me.

"Holiday Autos has been my life, I built the company from scratch and, therefore of course, I have a very personal stake in where it's going."

Jacobs said: "Becoming part of lastminute.com earlier this year represented a pivotal development in the company's history; there is a natural synergy between the two brands based on our entrepreneurial styles and the fact both use e-commerce as the main distribution channel.

"There are things we are learning from them which are enabling us to improve our own practices and profitability and, likewise, there are areas of our business which lastminute.com is taking on board to assist its own growth and development," he said.

"By working together and sharing best practice, we can become even more efficient at offering easy access to great deals for 'cash-rich, time poor' consumers."