How a trip gets planned
Three sittings in the chart room. Then the world.
First, we listen
Every trip is for something: an anniversary, a fortieth, a month you promised yourselves years ago, or no reason better than wanting to be somewhere else, properly. You tell us the occasion, the dates you're guarding, the pace you like, and what a perfect evening looks like. We ask fewer questions than you'd expect and better ones than you're used to.
Then, we plot
We come back with a course: where to go and in what order, when to travel and when not to, which rooms are worth it and which names merely sound like it, where to eat the good dinner and where to skip the famous one. Every recommendation comes from somewhere: a night we've slept, a road we've driven, a maître d' we know by name.
You approve the course before a single booking is made. We revise until it's yours.
Then, we stay close
We book everything, paper it beautifully, and remain reachable from your door out to your door home. Flights delayed, plans shifted, a table wanted at the last minute: you write to one address and it's handled. You will never stand in a lobby wondering who to call.
Stated plainly
for arranging hotel or cruise stays. The rate is always the hotel's own.
for full trip design: the three sittings, the plotted course, and our attention throughout. Complex, multi-country journeys from $750. Quoted before we begin, always.
for The Year: an arrangement for households that travel often. We keep your chart, hold your dates, plan every trip, and stay close all year. Twelve households, trip design included.
Hotels and cruise lines pay us a commission through our host agency, Fora Travel, when you book through us. That's how most of our work is paid for. The hotel's rate is the hotel's rate. Our compensation comes from them, never on top of your bill.
Arriving as somebody’s guest
Hotels at the top end are relationship businesses, and booking through The Chart Room places you inside those relationships: the partner programs the great hotel families keep for advisors they trust. In practice: the room that quietly improves, breakfast that simply appears, the checkout hour that bends, a credit at the spa or the bar. And above all, a note in the file that you are ours, which is worth more than everything else on the list.
And there is the quieter benefit: when weather, airlines, or life interfere, you have someone whose job is to already be fixing it.
Who plans your trips
Jennifer Szelag · The standard. For more than a decade, Jeni was chief of staff to three private households with impossibly high expectations. She ran the homes, the staff, the calendar, and the travel: trips planned to the hour, homes opened before the family landed, preferences kept on file so no one ever explained anything twice. She holds our clients’ trips to the same standard.
Trevor Braaten · The record. 802 flights. 1.2 million miles, about 48 times around the Earth. A thousand nights in 232 hotels across 142 cities and 20 countries. He flew for work for a decade, then chose to travel differently: fewer, better, farther. He has slept in the beds, eaten the breakfasts, and missed the connections, so you don’t have to.