Custom travel planning — real itineraries, VIP hotel access, and someone on call from the moment you land.
Takes about 5 minutes. Kate reads every inquiry personally and replies within two business days.
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Labo Travel Co is an independent affiliate of Brownell, a Virtuoso member agency.
Planning a ten-day trip properly takes 40 to 60 hours. Comparing properties, cross-checking reviews, sequencing cities so you’re not backtracking, finding the guide who’s actually good. Kate has already done it. You get the output, not the process.
Through Brownell and Virtuoso, Kate books at rates you’d pay anyway — with room upgrades, daily breakfast for two, property credits, early check-in, and late checkout attached. These aren’t loyalty points. They’re relationship terms you can’t buy at any price as an individual traveler.
The internet will tell you a hotel has a pool. It won’t tell you which side of the building to request, that the “sea view” rooms face a construction site until spring, or that the Amalfi Coast drive you’ve romanticized is a genuinely bad idea in a rental car. That’s the part you’re paying for.
Flights get cancelled. Weather closes roads. A property overbooks. You will not spend three hours in an airline hold queue at 2am in a foreign country. You have a name, a number, and 24/7 in-destination contacts.
Maybe one every few years. The cost of getting it wrong isn’t the money — it’s the trip. This is insurance against a version of the trip you’d regret.
Kate’s name on the reservation changes how you’re received. The upgrade, the welcome note, the table they said was full. Small things, repeatedly, for ten days.
Takes about 5 minutes. Kate reads every inquiry personally and replies within two business days.
Start PlanningPerks revealed
This is a real comparison. Nothing here costs you extra.
Booked yourself
Same nightly rate
Booked with Kate
Same nightly rate
Roughly $600–$900 of value on a five-night stay. Your rate does not change.
Perks vary by property and are subject to availability. Standard Virtuoso and Brownell preferred-partner benefits.
The preferred-partner programs behind these perks
Takes about 5 minutes. Kate reads every inquiry personally and replies within two business days.
Start PlanningHow it works
No mystery, no back-and-forth for weeks. Here's the whole process.
5 minutes
Where you want to go, roughly when, who’s coming, and your budget. It’s short. It tells Kate whether she’s the right fit before either of you spends time.
30 minutes, free
A real conversation about how you travel, not a sales pitch. What you loved and hated about your last trip. Whether you want a schedule or space. What “worth it” means to you.
Same week
If it’s a fit, you pay the planning fee and Kate starts. Nothing gets researched before this.
Typically 7–10 days
A day-by-day itinerary with real properties, real experiences, and Kate’s reasoning for each choice. You review it, react to it, and she revises. Most trips settle in one or two rounds.
Day 4 — Douro Valley
Morning
Rui collects you at the hotel
Your driver for the week. About forty minutes along the river.
Private tasting at Quinta do Crasto
Arranged before the estate opens to the public. You'll be walking the terraces with the winemaker, not a tour group.
Why Kate chose this: Most Douro tastings are pour-and-go. Crasto's terrace is the view everyone photographs, and going early means you have it to yourselves for an hour.
Lunch at the estate
On the terrace, on the same booking as the tasting. Nothing to arrange on the day.
Afternoon
Rui drives you down to the pier at Pinhão
Twenty minutes.
Rabelo boat, Pinhão to Tua and back
Two hours on the river on a traditional boat. Nothing scheduled after. This is the day you don't fill.
Why Kate chose this: Day 3 and Day 5 are both full. Every good itinerary has a day with air in it, and this is where it goes.
Rui meets the boat and takes you back
Pool, spa, or nothing at all. The evening is yours.
Six Senses Douro Valley
Confirmation attached
This is one day of ten. Your proposal covers all of them.
Ongoing
Kate books everything and manages deposits and final payments. Your entire trip lives in an app on your phone — itinerary, confirmations, addresses, documents, live flight alerts. From the day you leave until the day you’re home, you have 24/7 in-destination support.
Every confirmation, address, and document in one place. Live flight alerts. No printed folder, no email archaeology at 6am in a taxi.
Takes about 5 minutes. Kate reads every inquiry personally and replies within two business days.
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Kate spent years forecasting financial projections for a Fortune 100 company. She was good at it, and it left her restless. A trip to Cuba rearranged her priorities. She now plans travel full-time from Skaneateles, New York, as an independent affiliate of Brownell — North America’s oldest travel agency and a top-five Virtuoso producer.
She’s the one who takes your call, writes your itinerary, and picks up when something goes sideways in Lisbon. There is no account team.
No advisor has been to every corner of the world, and you should be skeptical of one who says otherwise. What matters is who she can call.
Labo Travel Co works with vetted destination specialists on the ground in every region we plan — people who live there, who know which guide is worth the money and which road you shouldn't drive. Where Kate has been herself, you get her firsthand take. Where she hasn't, you get someone who was there last week.
Custom planning begins with a planning fee starting at $400, paid upfront before any work begins. It scales with the length of your trip and the number of travelers.
From $400
For travelers who want the whole trip designed — multiple cities, hotels, experiences, logistics, the lot.
Complimentary
You already know where you're going and where you're staying. You just want the perks.
Most clients spend $10,000 or more on their trip, excluding airfare. If you're planning something smaller, you're still welcome to reach out — Kate will tell you honestly if it's a good fit.
The honest answer
Kate is paid a commission by the hotels and partners she books.
That commission is already built into the hotel’s pricing whether an advisor is involved or not.
Book direct and the hotel keeps it. Book with Kate and you pay the same rate — plus you get the upgrade, the breakfast, the credit, and someone to call at 2am.
If you're staying at these hotels anyway, not using an advisor is the expensive option.
Takes about 5 minutes. Kate reads every inquiry personally and replies within two business days.
Start PlanningYou can. What you’re trading is forty-plus hours of research, access to perks that aren’t for sale to individual travelers, and judgment about which choices are actually good rather than merely available. Kate books at the same rate you’d pay direct, adds upgrades, breakfast, and property credits through Brownell and Virtuoso, and is the person who answers when a flight cancels at 2am. Booking it yourself saves the planning fee and costs you everything else.
No, and not because Kate is hiding anything. Hotels are booked at their published rates, the same you’d see booking direct. Guides, drivers and destination-partner packages are quoted as a total because those partners’ rates are contractually confidential. Either way, the total is agreed before the proposal is written.
No advisor has been everywhere, and you should be skeptical of one who says otherwise. Labo Travel Co works with vetted destination specialists on the ground in every region we plan: people who live there, who know which guide is worth the money and which road you shouldn’t drive. Where Kate has been herself, you get her firsthand take. Where she hasn’t, you get someone who was there last week.
Sometimes. If the trip is mostly booked and you want the gaps filled, it usually isn’t a fit, because the parts that make an itinerary work are the parts that are already locked. If you have flights and a rough shape and want the rest designed properly, start with the inquiry form and say so. Kate will tell you honestly on the call.
Yes, in premium economy and above, through the Brownell Air Desk. There is an additional fee for it. The upside is that when a flight cancels you are not the one in a three-hour hold queue; the Air Desk is.
Strongly recommended. At the budgets these trips involve, the cost of a cancelled departure or a medical evacuation dwarfs the premium. Kate can provide quotes, or you can bring your own policy.
The inquiry form takes about five minutes. If it's a fit, you'll be on a call with her this week.
Takes about 5 minutes. Kate reads every inquiry personally and replies within two business days.
Start Planning