How We Design a Journey Around a Person, Not a Place
The questions we ask before we suggest a single hotel — and why the best itineraries begin nowhere near a map.
When a new enquiry arrives at the studio, the first thing we do is put the map away. Destinations are the easy part; they will still be there in an hour. What we need first is the traveler.
So we ask unglamorous questions. What time do you naturally wake up on holiday? Is a free afternoon a gift, or a failure of planning? Do you want to talk to people, or to finally talk to no one? When did a trip last exhaust you, and what exactly did it?
The answers change everything. Two couples can ask for the same week in Kerala and leave with journeys that share almost nothing — one built around kitchens and conversation, the other around silence and water. Both are right. That is the whole discipline of curation: not knowing many places, but knowing which of them belongs to you.
Only then does the map come back out. By that point, it mostly fills itself in.