Ultimate guide on how to get the holiday you want – with everything just how you like it.
Tailor made travel is our speciality. We’ve been putting together bespoke trips for years.
What it means to tailor make a trip is that we work closely with you to listen to your style of travel, what interests you and put together a trip together with you, offering advice and suggestions along the way. The idea is that together we create the perfect trip – not a package trip off the shelf where some parts aren’t to your liking.
10 Very Good Reasons to Book a Bespoke Trip and How to Begin
1. Where?
So, start with a destination – where do you want to go … then check out our website – the locations or country ‘highlights’, but note that these aren’t necessarily comprehensive as we couldn’t possibly list everything a country has to offer. Then, we also have some trip ‘ideas’ – they can be booked as they are but more often than not are a ‘jumping off’ launch pad to then add to or amend until we get things just the way you like them
2. Experiences?
Perhaps you’d prefer to concentrate on an activity – less time in the safari vehicle and more time out on walking safaris or mountain bikes. Check out our Experiential Trips here. We can tweak and amend until the trip is yours, perfect for you.
3. Accommodation?
Can be flexible. When tailor made you can mix and match styles and the length of time you spend there. For example – you like the area, but you’d prefer a higher end lodge. Or the lodge is fine, you’d just prefer more time there. The trip is yours and it’s up to you!
Perhaps in some areas there may not be the style of accommodation you prefer, but you don’t mind as you really want to go there anyway (the Pantanal comes to mind!). Making you aware of this is part of our experience and expertise, so that it isn’t a shock on arrival!
Unlike a scheduled tour or fixed departure trip each tailor-made trip is unique as designed for you alone
5. Let’s Chat
It is impossible to create a well-crafted personal trip without a lot of communication. This usually starts with an initial phone conversation or email.
It is much easier to get a feel for your taste and style of travel, expectations etc over the phone. After that we can start working on a draft itinerary.
6. Fine tune the itinerary
We often create quite a few itineraries, making adjustments and amendments until the tour is just how you want it. This can take a few weeks, or even months!
Because of this and the fact that we want to secure your perfect accommodation or activities, it is often necessary to book a tailor made tour far in advance. For some of the smaller luxury lodges and safari camps over a year in advance is recommended. This isn’t mass market, off-the shelf tourism. The aim is to craft your perfect trip and that usually takes some additional time and planning.
7. Unique Trip
The tailor made trip is unique to you. We plan it with you, and so the activities and accommodation are yours alone – hand-crafted using our in depth local knowledge as well as our own knowledge of what we ourselves or previous clients have fed back to us.
8. Authentic and Sustainable Travel
We encourage mindful travel. Trying to avoid a ‘point and click’ mentality. Travel should broaden our experiences and understanding of the world, so we encourage engagement with environments and communities
The road less travelled – where possible we try to look for areas where over-tourism has not caused problems – by looking for alternative and quieter areas such as private game reserves, and alternative forms of travel experiences.
9. Are Tailor-made Trips more Expensive than Group Tours or Packages?
Not necessarily – in fact sometimes they cost less as no tour guide accompanies you. You will still benefit from expert local guides in your destination. However, this is not mass-market tourism and so we don’t use large, ubiquitous hotels or cruise ships with the very low costs that entails.
Instead we offer value for money, by our close network of smaller suppliers and operators knowing that we are supporting local communities rather than international brands. Often, our suppliers have a long-standing personal relation with us – we trus them to care of our clients in a way which no large package tour operator will do.
Summary
The benefits of going your own way, and not being part of a large group or package means that we find that once people have created their own trip, they rarely book a standard package trip again.
