Here’s an overview of what you can expect from our Itinerary Service.
When we receive your Itinerary Service questionnaire, we will schedule a consultation call. This call is to help with general travel tips and planning strategies (not specific lodging/restaurant suggestions), including: Advice on finding flights; weighing airport options; rental cars and driving; and general sightseeing/meals/activities/lodging ideas.
The time we spend on the call is what we use as a basis to understand your travel goals, so we can customize the trip to reflect your personal wishes.
You can consult with us just to pick our brains before you plan your own trip, or take it as the first step in our Itinerary Planning for your dream trip. Each traveler is unique, and our itineraries are all unique!
Our consult call fee is €75, which we’ll bill you after the call. (This invoice is payable upon receipt.)
We’ll also send along our best advice along with a link to our “Tips” sheet for either Ireland or Italy.
Following the call (if not before), if you want us to design your trip, we’ll solidify our fee for the Itinerary Service, based on the details of the trip: For a trip of 7 days for two people, with at least 3 months planning time, our total fee is €575 (this includes the €75 consult call). We adjust this rate up or down, based on the number of travelers, the duration of trip, and the number of weeks/months of advance notice.
After your consult call, you can proceed with our itinerary service at any time up to a year after the call - after one year, another consult call (and consult fee) will be needed, as too many things change in the intervening time.
If you want to proceed with Little Roads’ Itinerary Service, the steps are as follows:
Step One: Flights/car
Ideally, we’ve had a chance to consult with you before you buy your flights, so we can help you choose them based on your trip goals. We’ll also advise on rental cars.
You will book your flights/rental car and notify us of the schedule. If you want, feel free to send us possible flight itineraries so we can advise further.
Once you purchase flights, send us the dates and times so we can get to the fun part: Choosing lodgings.
Step Two: Lodging draft
This step is essential in crafting the structure of your trip: Where you will stay.
We use our extensive knowledge of the locations we cover to select lodgings that are the best options for you, keeping in mind your trip goals and budget. We will send you links to lodging options that you can review – usually on Booking.com. When we send you these links, we’ve already determined that the places have availability at the time we send them.
Note: We only use that Booking site to make it easy to see and compare everything; you don’t have to use it to actually book, and often you’ll get a better rate by contacting the establishment directly.
We’ll include a few brief notes about why we chose these places for you, like proximity to sightseeing or a particular food location you are interested in.
So if you like the look of the places, you should book them right away!
You’ll book your own lodgings, with the possible exception of a few particular places that we’ll arrange for you. (In general our travelers make all lodging bookings themselves, as we don’t handle your credit card or other details at any point.)
It is always best to book places quickly, since the lodgings we suggest are unique, not big chain hotels.
When we send you this lodging draft, we will also send you a second invoice for this stage of the service, which is €150. (Note: This is in addition to the €75 consult fee, already paid at this point.) Again, this invoice is payable upon receipt.
Step Three: The Itinerary
Once lodgings are booked, we will create your itinerary, including day to day activities & restaurants. This document will appear as a Google document online, so it is easily kept up to date. The itinerary is chock full of info, with photos and links to sightseeing and restaurants and artisans for you to explore, and driving times between destinations. The photos in our itineraries are pics that we took ourselves on our own trips with our phone cameras – NOT stock photos or images taken and retouched by professional photographers – so you can know that these places really do look like that.
We’ll send you a link to this document along with a final invoice for the remainder of the Itinerary Service fee. (For example: If your total itinerary fee as previously agreed is €750, and you’ve paid the €75 consult fee after the call and the €150 Lodging draft fee after receiving your list of lodgings, then your final balance to be paid at this stage is €525.) As before, this invoice is payable upon receipt.
Note: Remember that once you’ve paid our itinerary fee, our relationship isn’t over! We’ll still be working and consulting with you on your itinerary - as outlined below.
Step Four: Adjustments and Final Itinerary
After the final invoice is sorted, we’ll finalize the revision process, during which we’ll communicate with you to adjust and refine the itinerary as necessary. This includes us making arrangements for personalized “Little Roads” activities (e.g., private falconry show, custom work from ceramic artist, sheepdog show, wine tasting).
Your Final Itinerary will have a list of confirmed meal reservations, hotel check-in times, and links to all of it so you can easily click through on your smartphone. At this point, the itinerary is complete, and the only changes that we will make will be calling the restaurant to ask them to hold your table if you are running late, or cancelling meal reservations. (This happens a lot! Many of our clients request a “meal break” after several days of incredible food.)
You are free to change the itinerary as you wish at your own discretion.
What we don’t do:
- Make changes in your itinerary once it is finalized, or make alterations while you are in transit. You can certainly make changes yourself - you are not beholden to the itinerary. If you discover that you want to stay in one place much longer because you love it, or add other activities you found since you arrived, feel free to do it! (Of course in this case we will cancel meal reservations for you as needed.) But those are things for you to arrange - once we’ve completed the itinerary, it’s considered final at our end.
- Handle emergencies such as medical problems, car accidents/breakdowns, changed or cancelled flights... except of course that we will cancel meal reservations and/or notify hotels for you as needed. If you encounter a major problem, please let us know, and we can try to offer our best advice if you want it, but we are not able to manage issues like this. [NOTE: If, after we’ve crafted your itinerary, your trip needs to be rescheduled or otherwise altered due to illness, family emergency, or other unexpected circumstances, we will discuss a “re-do”, with an additional fee determined on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the degree of change necessary for the new itinerary.]
What we WILL do: (including during your trip)
- We will provide “helper” maps for some towns/areas where we have parking tips or other orientation suggestions.
- We’ll suggest foods to look for in each season, and also in particular regions. In some cases, we suggest a specific dish at a restaurant that you won’t want to miss!
- During your trip, we are available to you via text/WhatsApp from 11am to 9pm each day, in case you want to cancel or alter your meal time or adjust arrival times at lodgings. (We will also be happy to receive via text any pictures of your experiences that you’d like to share with us!)
- If you have any other questions before or during your trip, we are happy to answer those via email.
- We’ll send you travel tips or notes about the area you are in as we become aware of them (e.g. a food festival, an impending big storm, transportation strikes). We’re not CNN, so we don’t have a team of reporters on the ground; but if we know it, you’ll know it.
- We’ll post your travel pictures to our social media (with your permission of course)
- We ourselves pay full price wherever we travel: Unlike most travel planners, we don’t accept discounts or kickbacks from any restaurant or lodging that we recommend - so you know we are suggesting it because we love it, not because we are being paid to do so. Book it if you like, or don’t - it’s up to you!
