Why the guide matters more than the hotel, and how we choose and pay the people we work with.
Ask any traveller what they remember and the answer is almost never a building. It is a person: a driver who changed the route because of the weather, a cook who explained a dish, a guide who told the truth about their own country rather than the version printed in the brochure.
We contract guides directly rather than through a chain of intermediaries, we pay above the local market rate, and we work with the same people season after season. It is the least glamorous part of the business and it is the part that decides whether a journey works.
Continuity is the point. A guide who has worked with us for years knows which of our travellers want to walk and which want to sit in the shade, and will say honestly when a famous site is not worth the two hour drive that day.
It also affects the places you eat and sleep. Family run guesthouses, small vineyards and local cooperatives cannot absorb the payment terms that large operators impose, so working with them is a choice about cash flow as much as about taste.
This is what the word authentic means when it is not a marketing term. The person standing next to you is not performing their culture. They are living in it, and letting you stand nearby for a while.
Written by Beatrice Barazzetti for the Dream Destination Journal.
