Bespoke Travel
In the storied tradition of bespoke tailoring, HV-Travel offers made-to-measure travel. Experience custom-built trips, hand-tailored to exacting standards from upscale hotels, superb meals, exclusive events, authentic experiences and personalized services of the highest quality.
The Fitting.
The best tailoring springs from a relationship of intimacy and trust between the client and the tailor (not surprisingly, given that you will be asked to stand naked before us). The first stage of building this relationship is a get-to-know-you consultation with our personal travel planners, and once we have ascertained that what you want is within our competency, we start to delve deeper. We use a detailed questionnaire as a tool to distill the essential elements, and then we begin a dialogue to understand the motivations that lie behind the answers. The process is dynamic, and often requires multiple fittings, but the end result is a genuine understanding of who you are and what you are seeking.
The Tailors.
To be honest, we can’t sew a stitch to save our lives, but we’re magicians when it comes to orchestrating the theatre of travel. Our far-flung team of global nomads, seasoned dreamers, regional cognoscenti and logistical gurus will craft a private trip to fit the unique needs and interests of your group of family, friends or colleagues. Our equally impressive team of wayfaring hosts will ensure that the journey is executed seamlessly, leveraging local relationships, mining insider knowledge, and unlocking their creativity to deliver a pitch-perfect performance. Our local friends will add the final stitch, inviting us in to their homes to share a glass of pastis and the best Salade Niçoise you have ever tried.
The Cloth.
The quality and diversity of materials that go into constructing your perfect trip are as varied as your tastes – about the only thing that we don’t specialize in are horsehair shirts. Hotels are one of our hallmarks, and while we are not averse to staying in the occasional world famous palace, our preference if for the less obvious hidden gems. Transfers are about experiences, not mere transportation from place to place, so we’d take a helicopter over a bus any day. Meals are fuel for the soul, not just the body, and we have a weakness for regional specialties enjoyed in a lively environment in the company of locals. Events are opportunities for epiphanies, not just distractions to pass the time and our local experts are passionate characters with real lives outside of the glare of conventional tourist traps.
The Thread.
It’s often the things that you can’t see that are more important than the things you can when it comes to holding it all together. Whether it’s agonizing over the wine selection at dinner, tasting every soupe de poisson within a hundred mile radius, or sleeping in every bed in Tuscany to make sure that there are no peas for your princesses, we’re thorough about every detail. We send our planners out years in advance to scour the terrain and soak up the local ambience, and our guides do a rigorous pre-trip just to be sure that everything is where is should be. We’re thoughtful about the things that never occur to other travel companies, and we agonize over questions of pacing, balance and flow. We’re also clever enough to hide all of the stitching, so that you can relax and enjoy the spontaneity of the moment.
The Lifetime Guarantee.
Unlike most bespoke suits, a made-to-measure trip is not intended for a lifetime of wear and tear – it’s a one-off, completely unique, extravagantly transitory experience. What will last for a lifetime are the memories formed in the alchemy of the moment, when the combination of a foreign land, a group of friends and the confidence of being in the hands of experts conspire to create something truly remarkable. The cares of the world slip away, the mind and the body become one, and the spirit begins to sing. We can’t promise to change your life, but we can promise to create the conditions in which moments of magic and personal transformation can occur. After all, the best things in life aren’t things at all…