This post is for anyone who is considering using our private / custom tour services. It is a breakdown of what we offer, and the process of using and ordering our services. We plan trips for both those who want a self-guided experience and those who want guides for each of the days that they will be traveling, and even those who only want guides on certain days of their trip. We have a number of services to cater to each and every type of traveler.
Let us begin with the “Trip Consultation” option (all of these services can be found on our custom tour site, here).
This is the best option for you if you are someone who has already planned the majority of your trip, and intend to execute it entirely on your own, but need someone to check small details for you. This could be anything from the feasibility of your train schedule, to making a phone call to a hotel or place that does not have English options on their website to check availability. It could even be used for those who want more ideas for activities or locations to visit for a specific region in their itinerary that they need help planning for. If there is something that you’ve heard of or saw but don’t know where it is or how to book it, you can use this option to have us look it up for you as well. This option is also good for anyone who wants to know how much they should budget for their trip, and need some assistance with getting an idea of how much things cost in Japan. We do however have an article that we’ve written on that topic here on our blog if you simply need some basic information.
We can consult you through email, through an online call or however you’d like. You can order as much time as you need (by the hour).
Essentially, this option was designed for those that need a little professional help with checking, adding to, or assisting with an itinerary that has already been planned by you or someone else. Thus it does not include making reservations, purchasing tickets, or any other form of support when you are actually in Japan. Full details on what’s included, and not included are here:
The next option is the “Customized Itinerary” option.
This option is for someone who is looking for a well-designed, day-to-day itinerary for their trip to Japan. Someone who needs an itinerary, but doesn’t know what to include, or where to start, or even someone who has a few basic ideas of what they want, but need help with turning those ideas into a basic day-to-day itinerary. With this option we typically start with a phone call to get an idea of what kind of activities/experiences, and locations you would like to include in your itinerary, what kinds of things you’ve enjoyed on previous trips, and what the ‘theme’ of your trip will be, if there is one. We will then put together a day-to-day itinerary similar to those that you will find on our “Sample Itineraries” page.
It will include a map of where you’ll be visiting for each day, a description of that day, the activities/experiences we think would be good for that day, our accommodation suggestions based on your budget and the type of places you expressed you like, general notes on weather and what types of clothes to pack for the season you’ll be visiting, and notes from your planner. The notes can be about anything but are typically about the overall pace of the trip, and what things we think should definitely stay in the final itinerary.
You can get an idea of our planning style from the sample itineraries page, but in general we try to include as many visits to smaller, lesser known communities in our itineraries and we also try our best to put a matsuri festival experience in each itinerary as well. The vast majority of the trip itineraries that we plan for our first-time guests end up being around a 70:30 mix of classic sites and lesser known places, with that ratio shifting more and more towards the lesser known sites with each subsequent visit.
This option includes and is limited to 10 hours of our time. Please keep this in mind if your trip is over 10-12 days. If you are planning a trip that is over two weeks in length, then it will most likely take us longer than 10 hours to plan. In this situation, we would typically have our guests order extra time as needed in the previously mentioned “Trip Consultation” option to complete the itinerary, or invoice them based on how much more time they will need. Please keep this in mind if you plan on choosing this option and are traveling for an extended period.
We once had a client who wanted to travel to all 88 temples in the Henro Route in Shikoku… on foot! On foot is the traditional way to do it, but we’ve never actually had anyone who wanted to do the entire route. It took us close to a month to complete that itinerary, and this particular client had a LOT of other criteria that had to be considered when planning. They did not want to walk more than 25-30 kilometers on any single day, and they also didn’t want to walk up too many steep paths in a single day, which meant that we not only had to measure the distance that they would be walking each day, but also the incline of the paths we had chosen. They also wanted to stay at nice hotels while hiking the route. There aren’t many “nice” hotels in the more secluded locations of Shikoku… in fact most people stay at the temples, or nearby sleeping ‘posts’ while doing it! This particular clients also needed the completed route to be linked to a GPS device so that they could have clear directions while hiking the route. This was a challenge that we loved taking on, and enjoyed delivering, but it required a lot of research and time, and is something that definitely cannot be completed competently within 10 hours.
After an itinerary is finalized and delivered, some of our guests choose to execute the plan on their own, and others decide that they would like for us to execute the trip (take a look at the next option for a description of what that service looks like). Please keep in mind that we may not be able to offer our Full-Service option to everyone. We may be too busy to do it, or it may come down to an inability to execute the itinerary within the budget limitations outlined by our guests. This applies to both the “Customized Itinerary” option as well as the “Full-Service” option. Ordering the “Full-Service” option unfortunately does not mean that we will definitely be able to handle your trip (outside of planning your day-to-day itinerary), which is why the starting planning fee is the same between both options.
Here is what is included in this option:
Next is our Full-Service Option.
The full-service option includes everything in the “Customized Itinerary” option, but instead of you making the reservations and planning everything out, we’ll do it all for you. This includes arranging guides based on the region you’re visiting, transportation, hotels, restaurant reservations, airport pickups, all activity and experience bookings, courier services, and support if you need us to change anything, or make new reservations for you and your party while you are here in Japan. Basically it gives you the freedom to simply hop on a plane and let us handle everything else for you. Speaking of plane, we rarely handle international flights for our clients (we do book domestic flights, however). If you need that service, we can offer it to you, but when you present your budget information to us please do not include your flight budget in it.
*For all clients who are interested in our full-service option, please note that we do not offer an itemized cost breakdown for this option. We cannot disclose the cost of experiences, or other services that our vendors, or guides offer to us as a specialized tour operator. We also cannot disclose the prices that hotels offer us to our clients. If you are hoping to hire us for this service, please be aware of this. If this is something that you require, then we would unfortunately have to decline your trip request as it would not be fair to our partners here in Japan.
Please keep in mind that the $450 fee is simply for the planning it does not include the reservations and any of the other services mentioned above. With this option our fee is within the budget that you specify when making your request. So for instance if you say to us that your budget is $5,000 total, we will plan a trip within those budget limitations, and will not charge you for anything above and beyond that (unless you wish to increase the budget). Our service fee for this option is built into the budget that you specify to us. For full transparency, the fee is typically somewhere around 20% of the total budget, however it is usually lower for higher budgets, and slightly higher for lower budgets.
Also, please note that ordering this service does not necessarily guarantee that we will be able to give it to you (as previously mentioned). Having us handle your trip for you is more costly than you handling it yourself. We try to plan everything within the budget information that you have outlined when you filled out our online form. In the scenario that we simply are unable to handle your trip request, we will let you know immediately so that we do not waste your time. Please keep this in mind when you are ordering this service. Circumstances that may prevent us from handling your trip could be:
- We are busy with other clients who have booked for the same period of time that you are hoping to book for (this rarely ever happens, however may happen when we are hosting our large school trips).
- Your budget does not match the type of trip that you are hoping for. No one wants to be disappointed when they travel. We are in the business of making travel dreams a reality, and so when someone’s dreams do not match what they can actually afford, we typically do not move forward with handling their trip, as we know that they are heading down a path of disappointment. People in this category are typically those who have traveled extensively to countries that aren’t as expensive as Japan, and thus they think that they can have a 5-star trip on a 3-star budget when they visit. You can’t convince them otherwise either. These clients are infamously impossible to please. We love treating our guests like friends that are coming to visit us, rather than strangers that we are counting down the days before they leave. We have a pretty good article on luxury travel in Japan that you can read here. Having a high budget isn’t as important as simply understanding what is possible with the budget that you have.
- Your trip is very simple, and we don’t think you would truly require our services. This actually saves you money. 9 times out of 10 we end up watching over these guests while they’re traveling, and offer advice as they complete their journeys in Japan. An example of this would be someone who has a very limited budget, and their trip is short and only has one or two destinations. In most of these instances, we look out for our clients by simply giving them the pointers they need to make it through their trip happily, but we don’t want to charge them the service fee that comes along with trip planning in this category.
Having said that 99% of the trip requests we receive for this category, we end up handling. It is extremely rare for us to decline a trip.
This is the only service that includes a full, detailed itinerary. Where the day-to-day itinerary will serve as an overview of the the trip, the detailed itinerary will include fine details like when your train will depart (and in some instances, which platform it will depart from), what time a specific activity will begin, when and where to meet your guides, etc. We organize everything for you and instead of giving you each individual reservation separately, we give you a single guide for your entire trip. This takes quite a lot of time to put together, so if possible we prefer our clients to reach out to us at least 3 months before their departure. We will still consider your trip if it isn’t within this 3-month period, so please reach out to us even if it is a last-minute departure.
What is included in this option:
So with this option, we would pay for and arrange all of your activities, accommodations, guides, experiences, transportation (unless stated otherwise), and even smaller aspects of your trip like restaurant reservations, and last minute changes.
Overall, the most important things to keep in mind are:
- There are no refunds for the planning fee and the service is non-transferrable.
- For the full-service option, putting everything together takes time, so (if possible) please inquire about this service 3 months prior to your departure.
- For the Customized Itinerary and Full-Service options, the $450 fee is simply for the (day-to-day, non-detailed) itinerary and the consultation that comes along with it. If your budget does not ‘match’ the itinerary that you want, we won’t be able to offer the full-service option to you, even if you’ve ordered it, however we will still deliver the basic day-to-day itinerary that comes along with the $450 planning fee.
- The planning fee only includes 10 hours of planning time, which is about enough time to plan 10-12 days.
- Clients who have hired us using the Full-Service option in the past do not need to pay the $450 planning fee (it is completely waived).
- Budget information is important. We plan your trip based on the information that you supply to us. If you do not tell us what your budget is, we won’t know what activities, experiences, or hotels we can put into your itinerary. Please don’t be shy.
- We do not provide itemized activity/hotel/guide costs for the trips that we plan. This means that we cannot provide you with a cost breakdown of each activity in your multi-day trip. The only exception to this is if you are requesting us to book a single activity for you using the “Trip Consultation” option, or by contacting us outside of a trip request.
- Please do not include your flight costs in your budget when you present it to us.
This is an overview of the services that we offer. We do not do any free itinerary building, and unfortunately cannot answer questions about how much something should or would cost without spending time to look at your trip plan. We have provided a lot of sample itineraries to give prospective clients an idea of what we’ve provided to our previous guests, and you can also check out our group tour itineraries to see what kind of locations we enjoy, and love to share. We are a very small team of people, and thus we try to make the best of our time while working. If you need more information on self-planning vs. hiring a planner, you can check out the other articles we’ve written to help people decide what is best for them. We’ve also written an article on what ‘luxury’ travel means to us which can also be seen on this blog. It is our most sincere hope that we can help enrich the time that you spend in Japan. Please let us know if we can be of any assistance!