What You Get With Travel Keeper® Custom Trip Planning
September 23, 2026
Custom trip planning comes in two forms. Full trip planning means I research, design, and book your trip. Award trip planning means I map out how to use your points and hand you exact instructions on how, where, when to book, so you can do the booking inside your own accounts. Fees start at $250 per household and go up with the complexity of the trip.
Which one you need depends on how you’re paying for the trip. Here’s everything broken down, from start to finish.
What are the two kinds of custom trip planning?
Full trip planning is done for you. Award trip planning is done with you.
| Full trip planning | Award trip planning | |
|---|---|---|
| For trips paid with | Cash | Points and miles |
| Who books it | I do | You do, in your own accounts |
| Calls included | Kickoff call before research, then a walkthrough when your plan is ready | Optional 20 to 30 minute call after you get the plan |
Plenty of trips are a mix. Award flights and a cash hotel is the most common version of that, and we sort out which pieces fall where before you pay anything.
What is included in full trip planning?
Research, design, booking, and if needed, support while you’re traveling.
- A kickoff call before research starts, so I hear the parts a form never captures.
- A day-by-day itinerary in the order that makes sense. Which city first, how many nights in each, which day is the long travel day.
- Specific hotels chosen for your family size and your dates.
- Flight routing.
- The booking. Once your itinerary is final, you send your card through a secure link and I make the reservations.
- A local partner on the ground for destinations where that helps. A tour operator or destination management company handles your in-country logistics and is who you call if a driver doesn’t show. They’re in your time zone and they know the city.
What is included in award trip planning?
A booking plan for your points, specific enough to follow click by click.
- Which program to use and why.
- How many points to transfer, from which bank, to which airline or hotel program. Transfer ratios and any current bonuses included.
- Exactly what to search for. Route, date, cabin, and the flight I want you to book when it shows up.
- When to be watching. Award space opens on a schedule, and the good seats go in hours. The plan tells you which morning to be at your laptop.
- A backup option for when the first choice is gone, because sometimes it is.
- An optional call, 20 to 30 minutes, if you’d rather walk through the booking together. Some people want it and some people never use it.
For award trip planning, you do the transferring and the booking yourself. Point transfers are irreversible, and that decision belongs in your own account with your own eyes on the screen. Plus, I really don’t want to be getting access to anyone’s bank accounts.
How much does custom trip planning cost?
From $250 per household for a single destination. From $500 for multi-destination or points-heavy trips.
The range is about research hours, not about how fancy the trip is. One city for a week is a known quantity. Three countries in ten days, or a trip where a big piece of the work is chasing award availability across four loyalty programs, is a different amount of work entirely.
You tell me about the trip first and I confirm your fee before anything starts.
The fee is nonrefundable once we start, and it covers the research and my time whether or not you end up booking everything through me. That last part matters more than it sounds like it does. It means I have no reason to steer you toward the hotel that pays better. You already paid for my thinking, so the recommendation is just the recommendation.
You can read my full client terms and conditions here.
Where does my money actually go?
Your planning fee comes to me. Your trip costs do not.
Those are two separate payments. The planning fee is paid upfront through a Stripe link before we start. Everything after that goes to the companies providing the travel. When I book on your behalf, your card is charged by the hotel, the airline, or the tour operator, not by me.
Do you need my airline or credit card logins?
No. I never ask for your loyalty account logins, your card logins, or your passwords.
Card details for the bookings I make come through a secure link, one time, for those specific reservations. That’s different from account access, and it’s the only financial information I ever need from you.
For anything on points, you stay in your own accounts the whole way through the process.
What is the difference between a consult and custom trip planning?
A consult answers your questions. Custom trip planning produces the trip.
| 1:1 Consult ($197) | Custom trip planning (from $250) | |
|---|---|---|
| Format | 60-minute call | Written plan, plus calls depending on the type |
| Best for | You have a direction and want it checked | You have a destination and no bandwidth |
| You leave with | Answers and notes | An itinerary, and the bookings made or mapped |
| Turnaround | Scheduled at your convenience | Plan within 10 business days |
The honest triage: if you already have a route and mostly want someone to tell you whether your connection is too tight or how to think about your points, book the consult. It’s cheaper and it’s the right tool for that question.
If you’re staring at a destination with no idea how to sequence it, or you’ve had the same eleven tabs open since July, that’s custom planning.
I ask questions before anyone pays for exactly this reason. Some people come in asking for custom planning and I send them to the consult instead.
How does the process work?
- You tell me about your trip. The form covers destination, dates, ages, rough budget, and what you want the trip to feel like.
- I follow up by email with any questions that need answered. Are your dates locked. Do you have points and where. Is this a slow trip or a see-everything trip.
- I confirm your fee and which type of planning fits, then send a Stripe payment link with the client terms attached. You read them, you pay, and that’s when we start.
- Full trip planning starts with a kickoff call. Award planning skips straight to research.
- You get the plan within 10 business days.
- We talk it through. Full trip planning includes a walkthrough call. For award planning, there’s an optional 20 to 30 minute call if you want to book together.
- One round of revisions for either option.
- Booking. For cash pieces, you send your card through a secure link and I book them. For award pieces, you follow the instructions in your own accounts on the morning the space opens.
- You travel.
Should I book a cruise this way?
No. Book it through me for free instead.
Cruise lines pay advisors a commission, so booking a cruise through me costs you nothing extra and the support is included. Paying a planning fee for a cruise means paying for something you can have at no charge. Here’s how that works.
If your trip is a cruise plus a week on land before or after, tell me. That’s something we can sort out beforehand.
Who should not pay for this?
Four groups, and I’d rather say it here than after you’ve paid.
- You’re booking a cruise. Book it through me for free.
- You love the planning. Some people find the research part fun. If that’s you, keep it. The Travel Keeper app is free and it’ll hold everything you find.
- Your dates, budget, and destination are all still open. There’s nothing to plan yet. Start with a consult.
- You want to approve every hotel option before deciding. I bring you a first choice with reasoning, not a list of fifteen. If comparing every possibility is the part you enjoy, custom planning will feel like it skipped your favorite step.
How far ahead should I book custom trip planning?
Nine to twelve months out for international travel on school breaks, and further for summer.
The planning itself takes about two weeks. Award space opens about eleven months out and the good routes go fast. Hotels in small towns can sell out for July by February. Timed-entry tickets at major sites release on fixed schedules somebody needs to be watching.
Closer than that, I can still help. The plan just works with what’s left instead of what was available.
Ready to start?
Tell me about your trip and I’ll come back with questions, your fee, and which type of planning fits before anything begins. If a consult is the better fit for what you’re asking, I’ll tell you that instead.
Still deciding where to go? The 1:1 consult is built for exactly that conversation.
Planning it yourself? The Travel Keeper App is free and keeps every flight, hotel, and confirmation in one place.
