How does TripsGala decide where I should travel?

The short answer

TripsGala chooses from what you tell us, not from a seasonal catalogue. You spend six minutes on the Soul Compass, a free set of questions about your mood, needs and travel style, and within 48 hours a curator sends a Living Proposal, your personal day-by-day itinerary, naming the country, the towns inside it and the reason each one is there.

If you already have somewhere in mind, you say so at the start and the work begins from that point instead. Nobody is talked out of a destination they have been thinking about for years.

What we ask before anywhere is chosen

Most of the six minutes is spent on practical limits rather than feelings. The useful inputs are:

• The dates you can actually move, and how many nights you have
• Who is coming: one person, two, or a small group, and the ages involved
• How long you are willing to fly, and whether a connection is acceptable
• Pace: unhurried mornings in one base, or a new town most nights
• What you want more of this year, and what you want less of
• Any passport or entry limits that rule out part of the map for you

None of this is a personality test. It is the set of facts that makes one place sensible and another place a mistake.

How the shortlist narrows to one

A curator tests each candidate against your calendar before anything romantic is considered. The filters, in order:

• Weather in your exact month, not the yearly average
• Door-to-door hours set against the number of nights you have
• Entry rules for your passport, and the time needed to arrange them
• Conditions on the ground, checked again as departure approaches
• Anywhere you have already seen, unless you asked to return

A worked example: eleven nights in February, quiet mornings, short transfers, one base preferred. That points toward the Kerala backwaters in southern India, dry in February, with one slow boat and one hill town inland. It points away from a Hokkaido route in the same window, where snow is magnificent and two of your eleven nights disappear into connections.

If you already know where you want to go

Say Venice in October, or Switzerland in June, and that is the starting point. The work then moves from choosing a country to choosing the version of it that suits your pace: which district you sleep in, which mornings stay empty, which guide meets you and in what language, which two sites are worth the queue and which are not.

Your day-by-day plan stays open to changes for eight days. You can move a night, swap a town, cut an excursion or add one. After the eighth day it locks, and the arrangements behind it are confirmed: flights, accommodation, private transport, local guides, the activities in the plan and the entry fees for the sites in it.

Start with the Soul Compass, six free minutes of questions about your mood, needs and style, with no destination required.