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There's a good Wall Street Journal article that did a great job outlining four reasons you should use a personal travel concierge: When should you reach out to a personal travel concierge? If you want someone to call when things go wrong: Nearly 70% of affluent consumers who use personal travel concierge say what's most important is that an concierge protect them or help them when things go wrong with a trip, according to a study by Harrison Group and American Express Publishing. “personal travel concierge are a kind of insurance,” Taylor says. For many concierge, this means being on call at all hours. If you're pressed for time or just want to avoid hassles: About one in three travelers feels overwhelmed by the amount of travel information online, according to the American Express Spending & Savings Tracker, a survey that looks at Americans' spending and saving clothes. If you're in this group, or simply don't have time to deal with trip planning, personal travel concierge can do it all for you. Tell them where you want to go and the types of things you like to do, and they can put together a list of options for you and book them, saving you time. Agents are particularly useful to travelers who plan to take complicated trips, or go to multiple destinations or with multiple generations, says Gonchar. If you want more of a local experience: Good personal travel concierge have relationships with locals in your destination, experts say, so they can do things like arrange for you to have dinner with a local family, recommend restaurants and pubs that residents like but tourists don't tend to know about, or find a tiny B&B for you to stay at where you can get to know the owner. If you want a highly customized experience: More and more travelers are asking for one-of-a-kind trips specifically tailored to their likes, says Gonchar. A foodie might want something like a private cooking class in Italy, a meet-and-greet with a chef she’s been reading about and a table in the private wine room of a restaurant. While she might not have the connections to get this done herself, a travel agent with deep local knowledge might be able to make this happen for her, Gonchar says.

Ok here’s where I am going to toot my own horn. We are hard working, detail oriented, and will provide you excellent customer service. But anybody can say that. Here are nine specific reasons you should work with us that separate FoodieNomad from other travel consultants: We've travelled France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and California inside-out . The benefits to you are that we've visited all recommendations we make and we know how things work locally, including the little things, and how to navigate them. We know what can go wrong, and how to fix it. We'll have answers to your questions about destinations that you didn’t even know you should ask. We can recommend lots of great hotels and out of the way places and unique experiences; We have detailed knowledge of many California, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal regions. And probably most importantly, We understand these destinations' “wow” factor and can ensure you have it on your trip. We speak fluent English and French which comes in handy when reading reviews. We have relationships with local guides and service providers. We've been corporate executives in North America for 20 years. The benefits to you are that er are extremely organized and cost conscious. We manage your dream project and budget like our own. Nobody can keep on top of every hotel and restaurant and guide in Italy as an example, but our local contacts, processes and methodology mean we can make the best possible recommendations for your specific trip. We can ensure that each of our travelers have a personalized, high-quality and unique trip. And, for the Tailored Itinerary and Turnkey Travel clients, we can manage your budget. We’ve traveled to lots of countries. The benefits to you are that we know what it’s like to feel like a foreigner in a foreign land. We have tips about travel insurance, luggage, cell phone usage, and language. We understand customer service. The benefits to you are that you get a North American level of customer service from us, and we act as the bridge between cultures, setting expectatins on both sides, because the words “customer service” don’t mean quite the same thing in parts of Europe, like Italy. We've personally hired guides for tours in major point of interests, like Vatican City. The benefits to you are that we know how to choose good guides. We work with guides who are engaging, informative, and provide the context you need, whether that be a focus on history, fine food or great wines. We will spend time on details like transportation, food, and overall flow and balance of your itinerary. Travel agents cannot earn commissions on any of these items so most cannot spend time on them. But that’s why we charge consulting fees; these are the details that will make your entire trip flow smoothly. We do not mark anything up or create a nebulous “package” with one price. All your trip costs are transparent, because you don’t pay us – We’ll use your credit card to pay the vendors directly so you’ll see line item by line item, what each item costs you. Hence our consulting fees.

Return on your investment is in 2 parts: Time saved during the planning process: To organize a trip to Europe with the level of organization and detail provided by FoodieNomad, plan on spending about 8 hours per travel day if you are going to do it yourself. A 10-day trip would therefore take about 80 hours for an average person to plan (including internet and guidebook research, time spent on the phone to destination hotel and restaurants, booking time, and double-checking everything). By contrast, plan on 2-3 hours spent via phone or email with FoodieNomad. For a 10-day trip, that's about 77 hours of time saved. Time used more efficiently on the trip: when a trip is well-organized ahead of time, you won’t waste time getting lost; showing up at the train station and realizing that train doesn't run on Sundays; fixing errors due to the language barrier during the booking process; or waiting in line for 2 hours for a museum that could have been pre-booked. We estimate that travelers with organized pre-booked itineraries can accomplish 20% more in a day, and don’t forget: you accomplish more in a single day, at a lower stress level, for more enjoyment. An Example: Let’s say your 10-day trip to Italy works out to cost $600/day, including everything. Let's say you have 12 hours per day of “out and about time”, to enjoy, explore, and relax. Each Italian vacation hour essentially costs $50. A 10-day vacation has 120 vacation hours. Therefore being able to do 20% more because of a well-planned vacation equals 24 hours during the vacation which are spent relaxing and enjoying Italy rather than spent problem-solving and stressed in a foreign country. To put a dollar value on it, those 24 hours x $50 per hour is $1200 worth of time that can be used to enjoy Italy instead of lost due to planning mistakes. How much is your time worth per hour? Put your own numbers in to the examples above in 1) and 2) (and take into account that part 2 can be multiplied by number of people traveling together) to calculate how much you will actually save by having a FoodieNomad concierge plan your dream vacation!

It depends on when you are going and how flexible the itinerary can be. For trips in high season, the more notice the better. For a low stress planning process, 4-6 months is ideal. For the Turnkey Itinerary Planning service, we need 3-4 months to plan your trip. For the premium Travel Guide and Concierge services, we need at least 2 months to plan your trip. For the Travel Coaching service, as long as you can get on our online calendar, you can do it last-minute or while travelling. You get access to a FoodieNomad expert from 8am to 9pm EST during your trip, which means we cover you 7/365!

On-trip support could include: Please cancel/change our dinner reservation The forecast is for rain tomorrow. Please suggest alternative activities. There's a train strike tomorrow. What do we do?