What I Do as a Travel Designer

When I started forming this idea of helping people make the most of their vacations, I knew that begin a traditional travel agent wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. Travel agents are awesome. They can organize and book the logistics of airfare, hotels, and airport transfers. What I discovered when we went to Europe was that the day-to-day of our trip was left up to me. How were we going to spend our time? Which tours would best give us what we wanted? Where would we land by the middle of the day and be ready to eat? And dinner? What were the best places to eat so we really experienced more than the tourists traps?

So after spending hours developing our daily itineraries, and the countless other trips that I done the same, I felt like this was a service I really could do for people. Not everyone enjoys dedicating hours to research for a trip, nor do they have the time. Thus, I arrived at becoming a travel designer. I have researched and learned so much just in the past few months, but what I know is that I enjoy this so much. From blogging and documenting our trips, to finding new locations or new places in the old locations, I enjoy each second.

I have included a samples of our daily itineraries from our Europe vacation. This is what I can do for you.

If you read about Venice, you will remember this was the one day of our entire trip where I did not plan the itinerary so precisely. As I researched Venice, most people said the best thing to do was to explore the streets, wander through the alleys and side-lanes. So for this itinerary, I just listed things we might happen upon that we would enjoy. Bookstores, cicchetti spots, and gelato were things we wanted to enjoy! I ended the itinerary with our dinner options. One with reservations. One without.

This was from our final day in London. You can see I research the distance between and try to organize our time by where we will be. I didn't want to spend all of our time traveling from one part of London to another, so organizing by location was key in such a large city. For dinner, you can see I just wanted us to have options. While the Mayflower Pub was my preference, I knew we would need to spend some time packing and preparing to leave the next day. We ended up going to the Sun in Splendor because the tube stop was just around the corner from there.

My post on Thursday, October 13th will be about our trip to Florence. This was our first full day there. Osteria Santo Spirito was one of the places that took reservations only by email. I only discovered that by researching through reviews online. The owner had responded with the information when someone had complained about having a reservation that got lost. The owner clearly stated that you only have a reservation IF you receive a number in a return email. The truffle gnocchi here is life-changing. I knew after our morning tour, we would head back to the hotel to freshen up because of the heat. I planned our lunch accordingly. We stood in line got our sandwiches and took them back to our hotel patio for lunch.

Do you have a big trip coming up? Do you need someone else to. organize the things you want to do? I can tailor each day of your trip down to the finest detail, so all you have to do is pack your bags and go!