There is one decision you make before choosing the destination, before the dates and before the budget. And it is the one that weighs most on how everything turns out: who you entrust the journey to. So if you are mulling over how to choose a bespoke luxury travel agency, it is worth starting here and not with the map.
Behind every Away journey there are people, not a form. When you write to us, you begin talking with a travel designer —Guada or Javilón— who listens first and designs afterwards. In this article we tell you exactly how we work, step by step, so you know what to expect before entrusting us with something as important as your holiday.
Tokyo, Tuscany or Polynesia are wonderful in their own right. But a destination is not enjoyed in the abstract: it is enjoyed at your pace, with your children, with your quirks and your appetite for it. And that is not something a catalogue can solve; it is solved by someone who knows you.
That is the difference between an off-the-shelf package and a journey thought through for you. We explore it in depth in bespoke or package, but the idea is simple: the same destination can be an exhausting trip or the best journey of your life depending on who designed it and how much they listened to you before doing so.
A travel designer does not sell you a product that already exists: they create it. They do not start from what is in stock, but from who you are, what excites you and what wears you out. They work on the journey the way a tailor works on a suit: taking your measurements first. That is why how a travel designer works is closer to a design process than to a sale, and why you choose them just as much as you choose the destination.
This is the bespoke journey process at Away. There are no shortcuts and no templates: there is conversation, craft and a person with a name on the other side.
It all starts with a chat, not a questionnaire. We want to know how you really travel: whether you like to rise early to watch the sunrise or breakfast at your leisure, whether you travel with small children or teenagers who already have opinions, what stayed with you from your best journey and what you never want to repeat.
In this first conversation we do not show you hotels yet. We listen to you. Because a well-designed journey begins by understanding the people who are going to live it, not by ticking boxes.
With all of that on the table, your travel designer gets to work. We choose the places to stay one by one, we think through the rhythms —when it is worth moving on and when to stay put—, we book the experiences that are genuinely worthwhile and we leave room for the journey to breathe.
You do not receive a generic PDF: you receive a proposal built for you, with a reason behind every decision. If you are wondering how all of this translates into a budget, we explain it transparently in how much a bespoke luxury journey costs.
A proposal is not born perfect first time, and that is fine. This is where the part we most enjoy begins: adjusting it with you. Perhaps a hotel suits you but you would prefer another area, perhaps you want one more day in one place and one fewer in another, perhaps a child will not put up with so much time in the car. We move it, we rethink it and we propose it again.
We refine it together until, on reading it, you feel that this journey is already yours. That is the moment we know it is ready: when it stops being our proposal and becomes your journey.
The day arrives and you set off with peace of mind, because we do not drop you off at the airport door. During the journey we are still there: if a flight is delayed, if you want to change something along the way, if the unexpected comes up. You have someone real on the other side, who knows your journey because they designed it.
That real support is a large part of what sets a luxury agency apart from a booking website. It is not only how the journey is planned: it is who answers when you are in the middle of it.
The journey does not end on landing. When you come back, we talk: what you fell in love with, what you would change, what you discovered about yourselves while travelling. And all of that stays with us.
Most of our families come back. A first journey becomes next summer’s, and the great celebration three years from now. And each time we get to know you a little better, so every journey comes out finely tuned before it even begins. That is the quiet advantage of having a dedicated travel designer: you never start from scratch again.
At Away there is no call centre and no anonymous inbox. There are two travel designers with first and last names: Guada and Javilón (yes, that is our affectionate name for Javier). When you write to us, you speak with one of the two, and it is that same person who designs, refines and accompanies you.
That means your journey does not pass through five different hands that never speak to one another. It is handled by someone who remembers that the little one gets seasick and that you hate rising early on holiday. That closeness is hard to copy, and it is exactly what the families who trust us year after year are looking for. You can see how this plays out in bespoke luxury family journeys.
Before deciding who you travel with, it is worth asking a few questions. These are the ones we would ask ourselves:
If an agency answers these questions well, you are on the right track. And if you recognise yourselves in what we have described here, you probably already know where to find us.
Tell us about your journey and Guada or Javilón will get to work on it.
Design your journey →Article written by the Away Travel Designer team, a bespoke travel agency in Seville. We design bespoke luxury journeys for travellers who will not settle for the ordinary.