The questions we ask at the start of a journey are, we think, more important than the ones we answer. A proposal written against the wrong brief is merely more work. A proposal written against the right one is the beginning of a journey.
Most travel enquiries arrive with a destination and a set of dates. We begin, gently, somewhere else.
Who is travelling, and what does the journey need to do for them?
A honeymoon is not a family reunion is not a restoring week after a difficult year is not a grown-up fortieth birthday. Knowing, at the start, what the journey needs to do — settle you, celebrate something, bring a multigenerational party together, return you to yourselves — changes every choice that follows.
What is the pace you are looking for?
Some of our clients want to move. Three countries in ten days, guided and precise. Others want one place, one terrace, one view. Most sit somewhere in between. The honest answer to this question does more to shape a proposal than any list of destinations could.
What has disappointed you in past journeys?
This is perhaps our favourite question. The things clients tell us they dislike reveal a great deal about what they actually want. Dining rooms that were too formal. Hotels that were too isolated, or not isolated enough. Guides who overtalked. Itineraries that left no time to do nothing. We plan around these.
What must be held sacred?
Every family has a non-negotiable. Breakfast at a certain hour. A specific room at a specific hotel that has been returned to before. A single museum that must be walked through quietly, alone. We note these at the beginning, and protect them in the architecture of the journey.
Good design, in travel as in any other field, is a function of listening. We ask more than most first conversations do. It is, we have found, the only way to propose a journey that belongs to the traveller who is taking it.
