Luxury Travel Advisory Services
Planning a significant trip is not complicated because travel is complicated. It is complicated because the options are genuinely overwhelming and the stakes are high. A two-week river cruise through Europe, a family safari, a wellness retreat in the mountains, these are not purchases you want to get almost right.
We are a boutique luxury travel agency based in Austin, Texas, affiliated with Virtuoso and one of fewer than 60 Certified Tauck Advisors in the world. We plan trips for people who have done the research, know what they want, and are ready to work with someone who can actually deliver it.
Our Advisory Services
River cruising is not a single product. Tauck is all-inclusive and fully staffed. Viking is strong for solo travelers and first-timers. AmaWaterways has the best active programming. Riverside has the best hardware. The right line depends entirely on how you travel, not on which brand has the best marketing this year.
Luxury Family Travel Advisors
Multi-generational travel is harder to get right than any other kind. Kids have their own pace. Grandparents have their own needs. The adults in the middle are trying to make everyone happy while actually enjoying themselves. We plan family trips that work for all of them, without turning it into a negotiation that never ends.
Luxury Adventure Travel Advisors
Active and high-end are not opposites. A polar expedition, a private safari, a trekking itinerary through the Dolomites, these can all be done at a level where the logistics are clean, the accommodations are excellent, and you are not roughing it in any meaningful sense unless you choose to. We book adventure travel for clients who want to push themselves a little, or a lot, without surrendering the things that matter to them.
Luxury Culinary Travel Advisors
Food travel done well is not a restaurant list. It is a week in Burgundy where you spend a morning at a vineyard that does not do public tours, eat lunch in a village nobody outside France has heard of, and end up at a table that took three months to book. It is a cooking class in a home kitchen in Bologna, not a hotel basement. We plan culinary itineraries for people who care about what they eat and want the trips to reflect that, all the way through.
Luxury Wellness Travel Advisory
Wellness travel ranges from a four-night spa resort in Sedona to a three-week Ayurvedic program in Kerala. They are not the same thing and they are not for the same person. We ask a lot of questions before we recommend anything in this category because a wellness trip that misses the mark is a particularly frustrating kind of miss. Whether you want total immersion or a trip that simply builds more space into an otherwise active itinerary, we can tell you what is worth the investment and what is not.
Our Planning Fees
We charge a planning fee. It is disclosed before any work begins, and it is not negotiable.
Here is the honest reasoning: the research, vetting, and coordination that goes into a well-planned luxury trip takes real time. Advisors who do not charge fees are compensating somewhere else, usually by steering toward whatever pays the highest commission. We do not work that way. The fee means we are working for you.
For a trip that costs $15,000 or $25,000 or more, most clients find the planning fee is the easiest check they write.
FAQs
When you book online, you are sorting through thousands of options with no way to know which ones are actually good. We have been on these ships, worked with these operators, and placed real clients on these trips. We tell you what is worth it and what is not. We also bring Virtuoso and Tauck access that you cannot get on your own, including amenities, credits, and perks that regularly exceed the cost of our planning fee.
No. We work with clients across the country. Everything we do runs by phone, video, and email. Location has nothing to do with it.
River cruises, family travel, adventure travel, culinary trips, and wellness travel. These are not categories we cover lightly. Each one has its own set of operators, logistics, and insider knowledge. We have gone deep on all five.
For peak-season river cruises and popular itineraries, nine to twelve months out is not too early. Some departures sell out considerably earlier than that. The sooner we start, the more options you have. That said, we have booked last-minute trips that worked out well. Call and tell us your timeline.
It depends heavily on where you are going and how you want to travel. River cruise fares run from roughly $400 to $1,400 or more per person per day depending on the line. A full trip including flights, insurance, pre- and post-hotel nights, and gratuities where not included adds another $3,000 to $8,000 per person on top of the cruise fare. We give you a realistic all-in number before any commitment is made.
The planning fee covers the full scope of our advisory work: the discovery call, research, curated recommendations, booking coordination, post-booking monitoring, pre-departure documents, and trip support while you are traveling. It is charged once per trip, disclosed upfront.
Ready To Book Your Travel
We are not for everyone. If you want to browse options, compare prices, and make the decision yourself, the internet will serve you fine. If you want someone who has done the work, knows which operators deliver and which ones do not, and will stay with you from the first call to the last night, that is what we do.