How TripsGala differs from a normal travel agent

The short answer

A travel agent books what you name: a flight, a hotel, a tour you already chose. TripsGala designs the whole journey first, around how you feel and what you need now, and only then arranges it.

It begins with the Soul Compass, a free six-minute set of questions about your mood, needs and travel style. You can say where you want to go, or leave that open. Within 48 hours a human curator sends your Living Proposal, your personal day-by-day itinerary. It stays flexible for eight days, then it locks.

What a normal travel agent does well

Quite a lot, and it is worth saying plainly. If you already know the resort, the dates and the room category you want, an agent can hold it quickly and often holds supplier contacts you do not.

The limit is the starting point. The conversation opens with a place and a price band, and the answer is assembled from what sits on the shelf for that place and that band. Two people who ask for the same week in Switzerland are usually sold the same week.

Where the two approaches part

Take two people going to Switzerland in June. One wants early trains, long silences and a single valley for nine nights. The other wants a new town every second night, a glacier walk and a late dinner in Lucerne.

Sold as a product, both tend to receive the same seven-night loop through Zermatt, Interlaken and Lucerne. Designed around the person, the first keeps one base near Lauterbrunnen with a guide for two mornings and nothing fixed after three in the afternoon. The second moves four times and keeps one hour unplanned each day. Same country, same month, two plans that share little more than the map.

Five things worth asking anyone who plans for you

These are fair to ask of any company, including us. Our own answers follow in brackets.

• Who writes my plan, a person or a template? (A human curator, who reads your answers before a single night is chosen.)
• What is actually arranged: flights, accommodation, private transport, local guides, the activities in the plan, entry fees for the sites in it? (All of those. Anything else is stated in the itinerary.)
• What language will my guide speak? (English, and other languages where a guide in that language is available at the destination.)
• Who watches conditions while I am away? (The Sentinel Protocol, our watch on safety and conditions at your destination throughout the trip.)
• What happens if the place becomes unsafe shortly before I fly? (If that occurs within 14 days of departure, we offer a Shadow Itinerary: a replacement journey of equal quality, which you may accept or decline. Any cost difference is settled transparently.)

What it costs, and why there is no list price

Nothing is published, because nothing is standard. What you pay depends on where you go, the season you travel in, how long you stay, how many people come, and how much of the week is built from scratch rather than booked as it stands.

A figure arrives after the written plan, so we set out in writing what each part covers before you commit. TripsGala has worked this way for more than a decade of practice, most of it by referral, and we began in 2014.

Start with the Soul Compass, the free six-minute set of questions about your mood, needs and travel style.