We live and breathe customized itineraries at Downunder Journeys, but what are they and why do we love them so much?
To better understand the benefits of a customized itinerary, let’s look at packaged travel. You can for buy a travel package off the shelf and it includes just about everything you need for your trip – flights, accommodation, transfers and activities. That sound good doesn’t it, and it is until you realize you have little opportunity to tailor it to your requirements. You can change up the activities from what’s on offer and maybe upgrade your accommodation within the existing hotel but that’s about it.
With a customized itinerary though the sky is your limit. You can go where you want, when you want and how you want. It is a uniquely tailored itinerary to suit your requirements, budget and expectations. You don't have to accept the limitations that are a part of a package itinerary. You can make it your own and we use our knowledge and travel experience to make it happen. The only considerations in booking your dream trip are your budget and availability of itinerary elements such as flights, accommodation and activities. This lends itself to the importance of planning for your travel but that’s for another blog post.
With a customized itinerary, the sky is your limit. You can go where you want to, when you want to and how you want to.
Is it expensive to get a customized itinerary?
No, it isn’t because we don’t charge a fee for designing your itinerary. That isn’t the case for all agencies, so you need to check that before working with any travel agency.
How hard is it to get a customized itinerary?
We strive to make the booking process as straightforward as possible. In a nutshell, you decide where you might like to go, or what you would like to experience, and we help you develop an itinerary to suit your dates, interests and budget. We will help you make decisions with suggestions and ideas based on our wealth of local knowledge so your travel itinerary is a true reflection of what you would like your trip to be.
The itinerary development in detail
First, you need to get in touch. You can send us an email, message, or call letting us know you’re interested in travel.
We contact you, ask you a few questions to find out the information we need to make a booking that works for you (standard of hotel, small group sightseeing and budget for trip). Downunder Journeys will then put an itinerary together for you, based on the information you provided us. We send this to you with a costing proposal.
We welcome your feedback about what you like, what you don’t like, what to change. We go back and forth until the itinerary is what you want. We continue to communicate and work with you until the trip feels just right to you.
When you are ready to book, you will pay for your airfares and a deposit up front, and we will request all your land arrangements. We then get everything confirmed and there may be a need to substitute hotels or sights because of availability, but we will keep you informed during the booking process. Once everything is booked for you, we will send you a confirmation.
We will then offer you insurance and we can help you with any visas needed for travel.
60 days before travel we will collect final payment from you and process your Travel Documents.
Then, 30 days prior we send you a set of Travel Documents, which will include a complete itinerary containing confirmations, addresses and phone numbers. We also include full descriptions and helpful hints along the way, voucher information for all things booked with us, airline ticket confirmations and insurance if we have taken care of these for you.
Then you depart!
We are just an email or phone call away for all our travelers while they travel.
While on your trip…. We are just an email or phone call away for all our travelers while they travel. We also have partner offices in each country we work with. This means you will always have a local contact who can assist you with anything booked on your behalf.
“We don’t sell off the shelf, never have, never will. Customized itineraries are the way to go, it’s how we travel and how our clients love to travel.” Mandy Buttenshaw (Owner/Director Downunder Journeys)