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Travel
How to plan your dream customised holiday with a travel agent
Customising your next holiday can help you enjoy a journey tailored to what you like to do and how you like to travel. Here’s how working with a travel agent can turn your travel dreams into a bucket-list holiday experience.
Travellers are spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting a holiday package, tour or cruise these days. And yet, sometimes none of them are just quite right.
It's in this gap that customised holidays have found their niche, offering travellers bespoke experiences that can be difficult to buy off-the-shelf.
Cat Penn, a travel agent for RACV Travel and Experiences, says custom holidays can give travellers a vacation tailor-made to their wants and needs.
Being able to select what you do and don't see, and what you do and don't participate in, is a huge benefit of custom-made itineraries, as opposed to a cookie-cutter-style itinerary," Penn says.
Guide to organising a custom holiday
What is a customised holiday and what can it include?
A customised holiday is essentially an itinerary that is built around exactly what the traveller (or travellers) wants to see, do and experience.
“We can do customised holidays for individuals, groups, couples and families of any sort,” she says. “We can also create itineraries for people who don’t feel that standard travel packages suit their needs, can’t find something that works for them, or have specific ideas about what they’d like to do.”
Penn says that travel agents at RACV Travel and Experiences can customise "pretty much anything", including:
- hotels
- tours
- day tours
- flights
- guides
- cultural experiences
- attraction tickets
- cruises (noting that cruises have set dates).
Customising your next holiday means you get to enjoy the experiences you want to do, not just those that are part of a standard tour package. Image: Getty
Why book a custom holiday?
Choice
The biggest drawcard for many people booking a tailor-made holiday is the opportunity and choice to do exactly what you want. "In every group tour, there's going to be a day trip or stop that isn't really on your bucket list," Penn says. "But you just go along with it. You've already paid entry for it in the tour cost anyway. When you're custom-making (a holiday), you can make sure you're paying for something you actually want."
Read more: How to choose the best family tour
Pace
With a customised itinerary, travellers can shape the holiday around their preferred pace. This might mean staying and exploring a certain destination longer or moving through destinations at a quicker pace. "There's less of a time crunch on things," Penn says.
The more flexible pace of custom holidays can also appeal to travellers with mobility issues, or those who prefer a slower pace of travel with more time built in for rest.
Personalisation
Penn says she's helped create bespoke vacations for travellers with special interests, such as a horticulturalist visiting Japan.
"He wanted a stronger focus on gardens and national parks," she says. "Normally in an itinerary, you'll find maybe a stop or two that includes something like that, but not to the level of his interest."
"He was really excited by the day tours we were able to piece together for him that actually included this area of interest."
Read more: The ultimate guide to the best things to see, do and experience in Japan
Facilitation
Customised itineraries can be made for any destination, but Penn says there are certain locations that they can be particularly useful for.
"Culture and language can be quite a big adjustment when travelling," she says. "There are some destinations where people, unless they're quite adventurous, can find it more challenging than others."
In these locations, Penn says travel agents can tee up local contacts on the ground to help travellers get their bearings, giving them the chance to ease into a destination they may not otherwise have felt confident visiting.
How to plan a customised holiday with a travel agent
While it's possible to plan your holiday yourself, there are distinct benefits to organising your bespoke getaway with a travel agent.
"The reason that we're in the travel industry is because it's a passion point," Penn says.
RACV travel agents typically have industry connections they can use to help find better deals, which can make organising a customised holiday more affordable than planning it yourself. These industry connections also mean agents can recommend experiences you might not have considered.
Enlisting a travel agent to book a custom holiday can also help avoid decision fatigue: that is, having too many options and not knowing which one to pick.
"Someone who's planning their own trip can get so caught up in needing to find the perfect place that they then overwhelm themselves with all of the information," Penn says.
"And that's where our team recommendations come in. We've got personal experience, but it can also be easier to make decisions when you're a little bit removed."
Read more: The best foodie destinations to visit across the world
The booking process
Penn says customers who visit RACV Travel and Experiences for a tailor-made itinerary often have a very specific idea of what they want, but it's ok if you don't. A customised itinerary can be built from as little as a destination or a particular interest you might have.
Whether you approach the agent with a lot or a little information, expect to be asked plenty of questions as your holiday is tailored to perfection.
"It's a conversation back and forth about what you're looking for, how we can help and what we might be able to recommend based off your requirements, destination and the type of traveller you are," Penn says.
"Getting an idea of the style of travel that sounds attractive, sounds restful, sounds fun, is what we try to get from the initial meeting."
From there, the travel agent takes what they've learned from their conversation and starts piecing together an itinerary and quote. Don't expect the first draft to be the final draft either, as agents fine-tune the itinerary in response to your feedback.
"Don't be afraid of asking for what you want," says Penn. "Take the time to have that conversation with the travel agent about what sounds good in your itinerary and what maybe isn't capturing your fancy and needs to change."
Read more: The ultimate guide to solo travel as a woman
An RACV travel agent can help make your custom holiday a more memorable experience, not to mention easier to book. Image: Getty
How much does it cost to customise your holiday?
A custom holiday itinerary can cost more than a standard package holiday, but as Penn explains, it can provide more value for money.
"Customised, independent itineraries can be more expensive than a big group tour where the costs are split over 40 or 50 people," she says. "But the reality is that half of the things on the group tour you didn't really want to do anyway."
"A customised itinerary might cost you a little bit more, but you're actually paying for the things you want to do. You're not paying for someone else's sightseeing bucket list; you're paying for your own."
You can also talk to your travel agent if you have a specific budget in mind. They can review what has been drafted and look for the best opportunities to save money, whether that means removing a nice-to-have experience that is not a must-have or opting for a three-star, instead of a four-star, hotel for a couple of nights.
Expert tips to get the most out of your custom holiday
- Don't try to fit too much into a day or location. A travel agent can advise you on what is reasonable within a certain destination or timeframe, based on the pace you'd like.
- Do ask your travel agent questions and provide constructive feedback, as this is what will help take your custom itinerary from good to great.
- Do prioritise things that you really want to do, based on your travel style and interests, even if they're not the 'typical' tourist attractions or experiences.
- Don't base your holiday solely on things you've seen online or on social media.
