The Lead: Airelles takes over

Airelles is my favorite hotel brand at the minute, because they are doing hospitality exceptionally well. It’s a distinctly French group with something of a cult following, and I predict they’re going to be the new Aman. They started in France, opened a stunning property in Venice, Airelles Palladio, and as of today they’ve taken over the former Rosewood Le Guanahani in St Barths.

Three things set them apart. The first is the experience they offer across properties. Le Grand Contrôle is the only hotel inside the Palace of Versailles, and they offer private after-hours tours of Versailles and the Grand Trianon, so you feel like French royalty. The second is gifting. Every time you leave the room, you come back to something new and usually personalized, like Ladurée macarons, exotic fruit or local snacks, and you leave with the ultimate goodie bag. On arrival there are initialed pajamas, and hats and toys for the kids. The third is kids and families. It’s really hard to do kids well, and for a group this small to excel with them at every property while still appealing to couples is impressive. I don’t have kids, and I don’t particularly want to be around them on vacation, and they still get the balance right.

Le Guanahani sits on Grand Cul-de-Sac, a protected reef lagoon that’s shallow and flat, so you can swim really far out. It’s great for paddleboarding, sea turtles and kids, and the vibe is relaxed and casual. Cheval Blanc, its obvious rival, is on Flamands, a wide-open beach facing the ocean, which I personally prefer, though the sand and surf change with the weather so the beach conditions can change pretty dramatically. Cheval Blanc is restrained, modern and artful, while Airelles tends to be maximalist in a very well-designed way. If you’re a couple and would rather not see kids, I’d go Cheval Blanc. If you’re a family, Le Guanahani.

One caveat: I’m not sure this season is the one to try out Airelles, because I believe the more extensive changes come after the season ends. I’d expect the full Airelles version by next winter.

Openings

Fouquet’s Gstaad opens December 4th. Gstaad is getting new players, and Four Seasons is expected to follow, hopefully in 2027. If you’re going to Gstaad, make sure you take someone who’s been before. Gstaad is relaxed old money, and the same families come back to the same hotel on the same dates every year, so even though it’s relaxed, it can feel cliquey. New openings should make it a little less intimidating for a newer crowd.

One thing to know is that Gstaad’s top hotels, the Alpina, the Gstaad Palace, Le Grand Bellevue and now Fouquet’s, aren’t ski-in, ski-out. They have shuttles and chauffeurs who make it easy, but skiing isn’t the sole focus. If skiing is truly the reason you’re going, and not just the après, the shopping and the spa, Courchevel has the better infrastructure and connects to the Three Valleys. If you’re going to Courchevel, make sure you get the newest Cordova ski suit. Rosewood opened there last season to great feedback, more boutique hotels are coming this season, and the top hotels in Courchevel 1850 start from €3,000-€5,000 a night for base rooms, and over festive, far more.

Suvretta House, St. Moritz. It got a lot of buzz last season, especially around I.C.E., the International Concours of Elegance, a classic car show held on St. Moritz’s frozen lake. It’s the only hotel in St. Moritz with its own private ski lift, so you can ski in and out. St. Moritz is a little flashier than Gstaad, and this is a fun one for ski season if you want Switzerland with more energy.

Singita Elela, Botswana, opens in December. Singita is the top luxury safari brand in Africa and the benchmark for what a safari’s hard product should look like. Elela is a big deal because it’s Singita’s first property in Botswana. It sits on the Abu concession, a large private concession in the Okavango Delta, and it’s small, with just eight private camps of one to four bedrooms each. I’m hoping to scout it personally in early 2027, so I’ll have notes and will report back. Botswana usually isn’t a first safari. If you already have one safari under your belt, it’s where a lot of people go next, to see the Okavango Delta. For a first, I recommend South Africa, either the Sabi Sands or Kruger, and Singita has lodges in both. They also have Tanzania, and Rwanda for gorilla trekking.

St Clement, London. The new hotel from the founder of Soho House, right on the Thames. It’s contemporary and boutique, with Café Clement on the ground floor, and it’s only been open a short while, but the energy is high and there have already been some high-profile stays. People are loving the overall design and also the bathroom cabinets, which is such a niche, specific thing. I haven’t stayed yet. I have breakfast with the team next week and I’ll see it properly in the spring.

Worth Booking Now

One of the biggest luxury hotel brands, with properties all over the world (hint: one of them was just named best hotel in the world by 50 Best List), is running a 30% off sale right now. It’s only open to a few select partners, and Passerine is one of them. If you want to know which brand it is or want to find out, reach out and we’ll plan your next trip.

Scouting Soon

In early December, I’m in Mérida for a wedding, then on to Mexico City. It’s a whirlwind, at least ten hotels across the two cities. I’m excited to stay at the newly renovated Four Seasons Mexico City and to see a brand-new property that hasn’t opened yet, along with classics like Casa Polanco, the Ritz-Carlton and the St. Regis. I’ll report back. If there’s a hotel in either city you’d like me to look at while I’m there, reply and let me know.

Passerine. New world speed, old world hospitality.

The hotels and experiences worth crossing the world for. Which room to ask for, and what’s worth it. From an advisor who was the client first.

Passerine goes out every Sunday.

I was excited, because it was a challenge. I was also looking into other Caribbean islands because I wasn’t sure it was even possible. Over festive, some hotels on the island require a seven-night minimum, and I’ve seen them go up to 14, which made finding space for four people two days before Christmas really difficult. Two other resorts had a couple of nights each. Because it was so last minute, I was able to get the minimum stay down and work with both hotel teams, so the family split their time between the two resorts. They got two different parts of the island and two different beaches, and they were thrilled to spend a little bit of Christmas break with the kids on the sand.

I’ve spent most of my own Christmases away from home, because my mom’s birthday is December 26th and we would always take a trip over it. We spent it on the Great Barrier Reef, under the Northern Lights in Lapland and at the Aman Summer Palace in Beijing, so I was familiar with this season as the guest before I knew it as the person booking it.

In the travel industry, the holiday stretch from roughly December 20th to January 3rd has its own name. Hotels call it festive, and it runs from just before Christmas all the way through to just after New Year’s. It’s when everyone wants to be in the same handful of places at once, either somewhere warm, like the Caribbean, Mexico or the Maldives, or somewhere with snow, like Courchevel, Gstaad or the Austrian Alps. Hotels price it as its own season, so you can pay two to three times the usual rate for the same room. Most also set a minimum stay. That can be seven nights or more at a beach resort, while a city hotel might ask for two or three nights over New Year’s Eve so it isn’t hit with everyone checking in on the same night and checking out on January 1st. In return, many hotels put on special programming and special meals for the holidays. It’s one of the hardest times of year to find a room at the hotels everyone wants.

The festive trip I remember best is the one I planned myself, years before I worked in travel. It was nearly three weeks in Australia, moving between Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, with as much time as I could fit on different parts of the Great Barrier Reef. I was thrilled when some of the luxury lodges of Australia wrote back with rooms, because online they had shown as sold out, and I didn’t understand yet that a hotel showing sold out over festive can still have space. Piecing the dates together was its own puzzle, since one extra night anywhere pushed back the entire rest of the trip. I have much more efficient ways of doing that now, but I didn’t know them then.

Some hotels don’t show their festive availability online at all, though rooms can still be available when you inquire directly. It’s worth reaching out to the hotel directly, or having your advisor do it for you (hi, I’m Lex!).

Our trip to Lapland happened because something else sold out. We originally wanted an igloo in Finland, but we were not ahead of the game in terms of planning and only started looking in late September. Our dates were flexible, so we made it work another way. We stayed at the Grand Hôtel in Stockholm and then went all the way up to the Treehotel in Swedish Lapland, which is truthfully a nightmare to reach but a really authentic and interesting experience. The hotel started as a bed and breakfast, and the founders bought the surrounding forest to protect it from logging, then invited leading Scandinavian architects to design rooms up in the trees. Every tree house hotel is different and they are scattered around the main house. We stayed in the UFO and in the Mirrorcube, which reflects the forest around it, and we saw the Northern Lights every one of our four nights. It isn’t five-star, and I wouldn’t recommend it for a lot of clients, but for the Northern Lights it was perfect. They offer snowmobiling experiences, a private, and traditional dinner in a tent on the snow with heaters inside. It wasn’t what we originally had in mind, and it only worked because our dates and location were flexible.

It’s also a good example of why choosing the right hotel matters so much over the holidays. In Stockholm, you need to check what’s open over Christmas in the city since much of it shuts down. Which hotel you’re in, location, and holiday hours at the shops and restaurants around it makes a real difference to what your days look like.

At the Aman Summer Palace, they went really above and beyond for Christmas. They left traditional Chinese sweets and pastries in the room, there were gifts every single night, and they gave us a place to open presents and left presents for us too. They made it feel like we had everything we wanted over Christmas. That said, there are newer hotels in Beijing I’d look at first now, unless access to the Summer Palace matters most to you, and I’m getting fresh feedback from partners on the ground there.

I’ve also stayed at hotels where it’s Christmas, everything is closed, and you feel stuck in your hotel room. That’s what I don’t want anyone to feel. In my experience it happens more in cold-weather destinations and in cities. I’ve done Christmas in both New York and London. One was a boutique stay, and it felt pretty flat, because the restaurants around it were closed and there wasn’t much space at the property. The other was a super nice hotel that was at capacity, so the service lacked a little, but we had a separate living room and bedroom, they set up a tree in our room, which was super cute, and they had multiple restaurants open, so there was always somewhere to go and something to do.

So if you’re going somewhere cold over festive and expect to spend a lot of time indoors, I’d splurge on the suite. Whether you’re skiing or in a city, you’ll most likely spend a lot of time in the room. At the beach you’ll be outside more, and in a resort where everything is open every day, it matters less. What you don’t want is a city hotel where everything is closed and you don’t have a separate living area. That kind of sucks.

I also tell clients to manage their expectations. I don’t think most resorts are at their best when they’re at absolute max capacity and putting on extra holiday programming at the same time. Only a few hotels do festive exceptionally well, and you’ll usually have a more magical stay at the same hotel when it isn’t full.

That family in St Barths worked out, but it was the exception. I start asking about festive nine months ahead depending on the destination. People who go back to the same place every year usually book next year’s festive while they’re still on property or right after they get home, and I’ve booked as far out as exactly a year ahead. If there are more than two of you, book ahead.

Some of my favorite festive picks are places people don’t think of for winter. Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco in Tuscany is a summer destination, and it’s very cold in December, but they have a Christmas market in the borgo, the mini “village” in the center of the property. It’s super fun for kids. A lot of people don’t know they have villas on property with their own pools, so you get that separate living space, and there’s golf if it’s warm enough.

Rosewood Hong Kong is another one. It was just named No. 1 on The World’s 50 Best Hotels list for the second year in a row, but it’s the butlers who make it one of my festive picks. They go absolutely above and beyond over the holidays, from helping with presents to coordinating gifts in advance. If you want a tree in your room or suite, ask ahead rather than assuming it comes with the room. One husband had the butlers wrap a present for her in her favorite color and ship it to their home, so it was waiting for them before they even got back from their flight. There is also afternoon tea at The Butterfly Room. If you’re coming from the States, you can bounce off Hong Kong and do a week on a beach in Thailand or elsewhere in Asia.

For New Year’s Eve, Estelle Manor throws an awesome party, and Skibo Castle in Scotland throws a fun members’ party. Rio for New Year’s Eve is also a top hit. I love the Emiliano and the Fasano there, and Copacabana Palace’s renovated Pool Wing suites are due to reopen this November.

If you haven’t booked festive yet, there’s still some availability if you’re flexible on budget and on where you stay. I’m in touch with the hotels on how it’s looking, so let me know.

Passerine. New world speed, old world hospitality.

The hotels and experiences worth crossing the world for. Which room to ask for, and what’s worth it. From an advisor who was the client first.

Passerine goes out every Sunday.

I’ve answered with the Carlyle. I’ve also said Aman, the Greenwich, Fouquet’s and the Crosby. It depends on the time of year and what you’re looking to do, and my answer changes all the time.

Of course I have my own personal favorites in each of these cities, but that doesn’t mean I’d send a client there. My own taste doesn’t make a hotel right for you, so I’m careful about my answer. My job is to understand what you need, match it with everywhere I’ve seen and send you there. So when someone asks me a question like that, my answer is usually more questions.

People want one easy answer, especially in this day and age of “this hotel is better than that hotel.” I get it. I watch the same comparison videos you’re watching, and I am starting to make them too. But there’s a lot of nuance in travel that gets missed in the AI and Instagram worlds. When I’m actually booking for a client, I need to know who they are, what they need and what they’ll appreciate. Answering a question like that goes wrong when you know nothing about the person asking.

The English Countryside Example

Say someone asks me for the best hotel in the English countryside. I want to ask them a few things first. Are you going alone, with a friend or with a partner? Are there kids? What time of year is it? What are you prioritizing, and how do you want to feel?

Then I’m usually choosing between 5-10 options, and I’ve been to all of them. Let’s take a look at Estelle Manor, Four Seasons Hampshire, Chewton Glen and Heckfield Place for example, as these are a few usual suspects.

Estelle Manor

Estelle Manor is for when you want to see and be seen. It’s a members’ club as well as a hotel, and if you like the idea of mingling with that crowd, it’s a great place to be. If there’s an event going on or it’s a holiday, it’s an awesome place to be around a lot of people and energy.

The main reasons to go are the spa and the social club. If you’re a cold plunge and sauna person, the baths are one of the most impressive layouts I’ve seen anywhere (other than true wellness hotels). The gym is really great too, and I’m very particular about a hotel gym.

It’s good for kids. They have little Land Rovers driving around the property, which is super cute, and activities for them. It’s not overrun with kids, but the pool gets super busy in the summer.

If you want any kind of privacy or a secluded stay, this is not where you want to be. Members who aren’t hotel guests can pop in and out, so the restaurants and the spa book up fast, and you have to think about your dining in advance. The entry-level rooms are priced quite high, and the service doesn’t always match. In high season, when they’re at max capacity, it’s not as polished. It also doesn’t feel like a traditional five-star hotel. If you want that, I’d go with Four Seasons Hampshire or Chewton Glen.

Four Seasons Hampshire

Four Seasons Hampshire is much more of an Americanized English countryside. Look, it’s still a Four Seasons at the end of the day, and it’s exactly what you think of when you think of an English manor. The grounds aren’t as grand or as expansive as Estelle Manor’s, but they’ve got horses and other animals, a big kids’ club and an adventure pool for the kids. If you have kids and want them in a club, Four Seasons is definitely the way to go.

It’s also really close, about 40 minutes from Heathrow. There are little towns around for a pub, a drink or dinner, so if you want to eat off-site, it’s super easy.

Chewton Glen

If you want a local English stay, where English people actually go, it’s Chewton Glen, down on the south coast. You’ll find more English guests there than at Four Seasons or Estelle Manor, and it’s not overrun with Americans. The rooms could use a little refurb, but it feels traditional.

They’re great with kids too, and if you have kids, I’d go to the treehouses. They’re newer, they have their own concierge and check-in, and they feel a little more adventurous.

It’s a 15-minute walk down to the beach, so if you care about being by the ocean and want to combine it with a countryside feel, it’s pretty unique. There are more unique little towns down that way, and they do a nice afternoon tea.

Heckfield Place

Heckfield Place genuinely feels authentic. It’s a Georgian country-house hotel about an hour from London. There are signature rooms in the main house and garden rooms in the annex, some with private terraces, and they’re basically all one of a kind. For dining on the property, there’s Marle, a farm-to-table restaurant with a Michelin Green Star for sustainability, and Hearth, which does open-flame cooking and fireside dining.

If you’re looking for a more boutique feel, I’d steer you here. If you need all the traditional amenities and a resort feeling, I’d steer you toward Four Seasons. If you want to feel like you’re staying at your coolest friend’s country home, I’d go with Heckfield.

So, which one?

If you’re going for spa, gym and wellness, Estelle Manor. If you’re traveling multigenerational or with kids, Four Seasons Hampshire. If you want a couple of nights that feel truly local, near the ocean, Chewton Glen. If you want something boutique, Heckfield Place. For a big multigenerational group, I’d do one of the homes at Estelle Manor or one of the larger multi-bedroom suites at Four Seasons Hampshire.

There’s also a version of this question where my answer is none of them. If you really want a super secluded stay, I’d look at the private house at Beaverbrook. That house comes at a very different price point, and you’ll need a car or a longer walk to the main facility, so it has to be factored in. Not everyone wants that.

When my relationships come into it

My relationships with hotels can drastically change what a guest receives. Earlier this year, a client booked one of the top hotels in London. I know the property well, and I said, “This guest is super important to me. Please look after them.” They happened to have availability, and it wasn’t their super high season, so they gave him multiple category upgrades. The difference in price was about £20,000 a night. It happened again just this past week at a hotel in New York, where a first-time client was upgraded to a better view.

So when I’m advising clients, that can come into play. If I’m ranking two properties equally and I think I’ll be able to offer better service at one of them, I’ll let them know. Ultimately, it’s still their decision. I’m not just pushing one property because I have a friend there. That’s just bad business.

Who are you asking?

So my advice to travelers is to look at who you’re asking. Do you trust this person’s taste to tell you where you should stay?

I see a travel advisor as an extension of your team. If you have an interior designer, you’d want to trust their taste. If you have a stylist, you’d think they’re quite chic. But an interior designer has their own personal preferences and can still match the style of a home to the client. It’s the same with me. I don’t only work with people who share my taste. My job is knowing when your taste is different, what you’ll like and won’t like, and having that judgment call.

I always ask about other areas of your life, like how you like to spend your time in your own city. I ask about previous trips and what resonated, and one of my favorite questions is, “What didn’t resonate?” What’s a hotel you didn’t like, and why? Was it overly maximalist, or too simple? Did it not have a sense of place? Did it feel too much like a sense of place, and you wanted something more modern? Did you hate being too close to an elevator? I ask this for both city hotels and more remote hotels, so I can understand what you gravitate towards. Who you’re traveling with, the purpose of the trip and how you want to feel all shape how I read your taste.

The clients I love working with have a sharp grip on their taste. If you know you love ultra-modern, great. I know exactly where I’m steering you and where I’m keeping you away from. I also know when to push that boundary and say, “Hey, look, this hotel doesn’t exactly fit your taste, but the service and hard product are just above and beyond the hotel that does.”

Good taste in a travel advisor means good taste in design too. It’s having a keen eye for what different types of service feels like, whether it’s warm or kind of cold, at arm’s length. It’s appreciating all different types of styles and not only gravitating towards one brand or one type of hotel, whether that’s only booking boutique or only booking larger chains. It’s being able to sharply describe the difference between two competing hotels in the same market, and the feeling of walking into each.

Take two London hotels. The Chancery Rosewood is grand in its design, but the rooms have a residential feel. There’s a sculptural chandelier in the atrium, and a giant eagle on the roof at the Eagle Bar. The Cadogan is steeped in history and feels very traditional, in the way people greet you, in the service, and in having access to tennis. The way the guests interact is part of it too. They’re both lovely in their own right, but the service and ambiance are completely different.

I’ve seen other advisors recommend hotels that don’t align with their clients’ taste, because of their own personal preferences or their relationships. That’s hard for me to bite my tongue on, and I don’t agree with it.

For my own advice, I go to a few very select, trusted advisors who don’t have skin in the game of where I’m sending people. I ask friends who travel and whose taste I trust. I have a very chic friend in New York who is a writer with a keen eye for design, atmosphere and feeling, and I’d trust her to describe the way a place feels. My very first boss, the chicest Colombian woman, has an amazing way of describing the places she’s been. I also love asking GMs and hotel salespeople about their own travels. Not about the destination they’re selling, but about somewhere they have no affiliation with. If a hotelier in Europe goes to Buenos Aires, what did they think of the hotel and the place they stayed?

So lean on your own taste, and trust others with exceptional taste where it’s appropriate.

Passerine. New world speed, old world hospitality.

The hotels and experiences worth crossing the world for. Which room to ask for, and what’s worth it. From an advisor who was the client first.

Passerine goes out every Sunday.

Subscribe now

Last week I wrote about where my standards come from. This week I’m sharing a few of the standards themselves. These are the things I notice the moment I walk into a hotel room, and once I’ve noticed them, I can’t stop. Some of them sound small. At $2,000 a night for an entry-level room, I don’t think anything is small.

1. The walkthrough

You’ve just flown forty hours across the world. You get to your room, and someone comes in with you and spends ten minutes showing you where the bed is and that you have a sink.

Believe me, even if there are four bedrooms and five bathrooms, we will be able to find the bathroom. I will find the air conditioning. If I can’t, I can call guest services, or the butler if there is one, and someone can come and show me.

I think it bothers people at this level because a big part of luxury is feeling expected and known. You want to walk into the room and feel that it’s yours. I find the “Welcome home” slogan a bit cheesy, but there is some truth in it. The room should say, this is yours, this is your time, do with it what you want. The walkthrough says the opposite. Someone is standing in your space showing you something completely obvious.

Some people love the tour, and I’ll come back to that.

2. Check-in

I could write an entire post about check-in, and one day I will. For now, here is the one that matters most.

If a hotel is charging $2,000 a night and up for an entry-level room, it should know my name when I arrive. It should know my arrival time if I sent it in advance. It should have my details on file, whether I sent them or my advisor did, and I shouldn’t be asked for them again at the desk. At that level, it should simply be expected.

3. The milk

A hotel will spend real money on the minibar. There are artisanal crackers, good snacks and an interesting coffee machine, and there is nothing in the fridge to put in the coffee.

Nine times out of ten, the person staying in that room does not want black coffee. Put milk in the fridge. Put regular milk and oat milk, so the room is ready for the person who is actually staying in it.

Some hotels get this right. When I stayed at Aman Sveti Stefan, there was milk in the fridge and the minibar was free. At Belmond Maroma, coffee is left on your terrace every morning, which is my favorite thing about the property, and the question of milk never comes up. If you’re going to bring coffee to the room like that, you’re excused. Everyone else, please, put milk in the room.

4. The robe and the slippers

If a hotel has spent all that money on the thread count of the sheets and on getting every finish right, it shouldn’t skimp on the slippers and the robe. A thin slipper and a thin robe undo a lot of good work.

The hotels I love give you two. There’s a thin kimono for getting ready, when you’ve just come out of the shower, the bathroom is hot and steamy, and you’re doing your hair and makeup. Then there’s a thick, fluffy robe for when you come back from dinner and want to lounge. Those hotels have thought about what you’d want at home. I have five different robes at home for different occasions, so I notice.

Why I’m sharing this

None of these are rules. They’re what I notice, and I’d rather you know what I notice before you trust my recommendations.

Plenty of guests love being shown the room. They want the general manager to meet them, give them a tour, and even show them a few other rooms for their next stay. That’s why I ask every client how they like to feel before I book anything, and why I tell the hotel before they arrive. The guest who wants the tour gets the tour. The guest who doesn’t gets left alone with the milk already in the fridge.

Passerine. New world speed, old world hospitality.

The hotels and experiences worth crossing the world for. Which room to ask for, and what’s worth it. From an advisor who was the client first.

Passerine goes out every Sunday.

Subscribe now

My mom, sister and I had just landed in Venice. A handsome Italian man named Ivan met us at the airport, escorted us onto our chic boat, and took us to our hotel, where the staff were waiting for us. The staff already had our passport information, and they quickly and discreetly escorted us up to our room after the long journey.

I thought it was all magical. I hadn’t realized that someone could be waiting for you the moment you arrived. Ivan stayed with us for the entire trip through Italy. He took us from Venice to Rome, Florence, Bologna, and finally Paris. Ivan made sure everything was handled, from the time we had breakfasts to making sure we had Euros when shopping. He navigated the streets so we were able to soak everything up without a single worry.

A big part of luxury is capturing this feeling. You are expected, you are understood, and the time is yours. I was a kid and couldn’t have explained it, but I knew I wanted it again.

After that, every trip started with the same questions: where are we staying? What will the rooms be like? Will they leave a note with our names? I studied the view and bathroom products, and I wanted to know how the hotel knew when we were coming back from the room.

By my early teens, I was the one planning. My mom wanted to see Spain, so I logged into her Amex account and pulled up a different tab for every Fine Hotel & Resort property in every city. I took her through them methodically, comparing the price, views, bedroom configurations. After Spain came Scandinavia, Africa, Turkey, a River Cruise, Antarctica… eventually it was just my mom and me, and by the time I finished my Master’s at NYU I had planned my own trips to all seven continents.

That is where my standards come from. I grew up as a guest in these hotels, so I know what they feel like when they get it right, and I notice quickly when they don’t.

At a hotel charging $2k a night for an entry-level room, I expect them to know my name when I arrive, what time they are expecting me, and to have my details on file. I don’t want to be walked through my own room after a long flight, because I promise I’ll be able to find the bathroom on my own. If there is an interesting coffee machine and a beautiful minibar, I would like for there to be milk in the fridge. I have a lot of these opinions, and you’ll get all of them here.

What I didn’t have for a long time was the trade itself. A recruiter found me through an itinerary I’d produced for one of my clients, and he was relentless about messaging me on LinkedIn. At the time, I was finishing my Master’s and planning multi-week trips to Australia and around the globe for clients who paid me a planning fee for an incredibly in depth itinerary. When I started interviewing, I didn’t know that hotels paid commission. I didn’t know the term DMC either, which is the local management company that runs a trip on the ground, even though Ivan had worked for one.

Planning and experiencing a beautiful trip and knowing how the industry works are different skills, and I was grateful to grow up with the former. The latter I learned through spending years training at top private travel membership clubs, and then I took that knowledge and built the foundations of a travel program for a leading AI concierge company. Those years taught me what you can’t learn as a guest. I learned how to work with family offices and assistants, not just the principal. I learned how hotel upgrades really work, and when is possible to even ask for one. I learned what traveling in the busiest weeks of the year looks like, and what a full property buyout involves. We were a good sized team with different areas of expertise, so I learned to plan nearly every destination under the sun.

This has been my career, not a second one. Anyone can become a travel advisor now. You can join a host agency over a weekend, post a few hotel videos, and be in business, and some of those advisors are decent. I did the job for years before posting about it. This is the wrong order, apparently.

Here is what all of that looks like when I plan a trip.

My standards are mine, and yours might be different. I can’t stand the room walk through when I’ve checked in, and some people love it. The first thing I ask a client is how they like to feel, and what they are prioritizing. Some of the wealthiest travelers I plan for wouldn’t spend $5k a night on a room in a city, but they won’t hesitate to spend four times that amount a night when traveling with their parents and kids.

Once I know these priorities, we work through options together, and I advise with my expertise versus just providing information, since anyone can look up the specs of a destination or hotel these days. Through this process, I’m in contact with my contacts at the hotel on a local property and higher brand level, letting them know we’re in the process of booking, who my clients are, and giving them the details. These are people I’ve met in person on property and also see on a regular basis through the industry, which is why the advisor relationship is critical. For some clients, I’ll ask that they are left alone and quickly escorted to their room. For another, I’ll arrange an embroidered robe left in the bathroom with their initials in the hotel’s signature fabric. These are personal touches that make an impact.

I want my clients to arrive the way we arrived in Venice, with the feeling of being known, and nothing left for them to think about. My father is French, and the word I’d use for all this is savoir-faire, knowing how things should be done. I grew up around it, and then I was trained in it.

That’s Passerine. New world speed, old world hospitality.

The hotels and experiences worth crossing the world for. Which room to ask for, and what’s worth it. From an advisor who was the client first.