How To Brief An Advisor

The first conversation is the itinerary, started.

A good brief is not a Pinterest board. It is a few true sentences about how you travel, who you are with, what you will not do, and what the trip is for. I can work from a mood. I cannot work from a mood that is pretending to be a spreadsheet.

Discovery is twenty to twenty-five minutes and complimentary. It is not a sales call. It is how I learn whether we are a fit, and which engagement the work actually is — a simple week, a signature trip, an expedition. The fee sheet is public on this site under Investment.

What I Need To Hear

Who is going, and who is deciding. Dates that are real versus dates that are a wish. A budget that includes the trip, not only the hotel. Whether a suite is a need or a habit. Whether you want a villa, a hotel, or you do not yet know. Pace: one city or four. Appetite: restaurants as the point, or restaurants as fuel. How you feel about early flights, long drives, and a day with nothing on it.

Also the thing underneath. A birthday. A return after a long time away. Travel with children who are no longer children. A first safari. Japan again. You do not have to make a speech. One sentence is enough.

If you already know you want a house, say so. If you already know you do not, say that too. I wrote the architecture version in When A Villa Is The Right Call. The brief is not the place to perform taste. It is the place to tell the truth about how you actually travel.

A useful brief is short. Three true sentences will take me farther than a deck. How you like to wake. Who has to be happy. What would make the week a failure. I can design from that. I cannot design from a mood board that will not admit a constraint.

What I Do Not Need

A forty-page brief copied from a forum. A list of hotels you have already booked. A request to reverse-engineer an influencer’s week. I will look at inspiration if it is yours. I will not rebuild someone else’s itinerary and call it designed.

If you already know the hotel and the dates, hotel-only work is a different, smaller file. Say so. Do not hire planning and then require that nothing move.

I also do not need a performance of how well-traveled you are. I need the constraints: the person who will not do a small aircraft, the child who still needs a connecting door, the week that cannot move, the budget that is real. Constraints are not a failure of the brief. They are the brief.

What A Fit Actually Means

Fit is not chemistry. It is whether I can do this work the way I do it, and whether you want that. If you need a large agency with a bench of advisors, I am not that. If you need someone who will book the hotel that photographs well and hosts poorly because it ranks, I am not that either. I wrote the refusal list in What I Will Not Book.

Discovery is where I say so. You should leave the call knowing whether we continue, and at which engagement. Planning is billed separately and is non-refundable once we start, because the work starts. That is on the fee sheet because the work is real, not because the conversation is a funnel.

If we are not a fit, I will say that too. A complimentary call that ends in a no is still a successful brief. It saves the trip from being designed by the wrong person.

What Happens After We Talk

You leave discovery with a written next step. If we continue, a service agreement and a non-refundable planning fee start the design. Options are refined until the itinerary is yours. I remain reachable while you travel. I wrote the other half of this in After You Return.

The brief does not end when the itinerary is issued. If the day shifts, I want to know how you travel well enough to move the day without a second interview. That is why the first conversation is the itinerary, started — not a form you fill so I can fill a template.

If you are ready to brief the trip, begin here. Inquire.