Aster Travel Design designs trips in regions we know through our own work rather than through a brochure. The list is short on purpose. It is the map where we can answer a transfer question at nine at night without checking a directory, and where we have walked the hotel districts we put into an itinerary.
Europe, our largest share of the work
Multi-country routes through Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece and the Netherlands, plus river cruises from the Danube to the Rhine. For Europe we ask for 90 days of lead time, because good summer rooms and sailings are held that far out. Rail-heavy itineraries, coastal drives and city breaks built on three or four bases are the shapes we design most often.
Shoulder months do most of the work. May, June, September and October give the same route with shorter queues and rooms that are still free at ninety days. For a July departure we start at a hundred and twenty days, and for a Christmas market sailing the design begins the previous spring.
Family and multigenerational bases
Hawaii for weeks where the pool and the nap schedule matter more than the sight list, and island or coastal routes where six to twelve people can share one house with a second bathroom. We check playground-to-museum walking distances ourselves before they enter an itinerary, and we plan the four in the afternoon before we plan dinner.
Cruises sit between the two. Multigenerational sailings work when the ship does the moving and every branch of the family gets a cabin with a door. River cruises work when a group wants scenery without a change of base each night. We hold space on a few departures a year and plan the ports around the slowest walker in the party.
Long-haul and group departures
South Africa and Zimbabwe in a single route, safaris built on two or three lodges instead of five, and spring weeks in Mexico for groups who want a base and a plan rather than a resort schedule. A few times a year we hold space on a group departure, and clients travel with company on the road instead of organizing a table of eight themselves.
Tell us the season first
Dates change a destination more than a budget does. Shoulder months in Europe cut both the price and the queue, July and August push a trip north or into the mountains, and the Caribbean season runs against the hurricane months from June. Give us a window and a range and we will come back with two or three regions that fit both, with the reason each one qualifies.
Where we do not work
Regions where we cannot answer a practical question from experience, trips that need permits we cannot obtain, and itineraries that would pack four hotel changes into seven nights. When a project lands in one of those, we say so on the first call rather than after the design fee has been invoiced. If you are set on a place outside this list, ask anyway: we will either find the person who knows it or tell you plainly that someone else should design it.