THE STORY
It Started With a Postcard.
I didn’t start in travel the way most advisors do.
I’d actually forgotten about it until recently… found it while going through old family things. A postcard from Hong Kong, postmarked June 1980, addressed to ‘Miss Charity Buchanan’ in Pinellas Park, Florida. On the back, in my grandmother’s handwriting: ‘Dear Charity. Memaw is having a good time but miss you. I went to a Chinese Kindergarten today to visit with the children. Love you, Memaw.’
My grandmother Mercedes didn’t grow up traveling. She discovered the world almost by accident. She chaperoned my mother’s high school field trip to Mexico, and something in her shifted. Once she started, she never stopped. She wasn’t traveling to check boxes or collect passport stamps. She was the kind of woman who went to Hong Kong and spent the day visiting a kindergarten to sit with the children. That was how she saw the world: with her whole heart, wide open, looking for the human thing in every place she went.
She planted something in me that I didn’t fully understand until years later… the belief that travel isn’t something you just do. It’s something you design, with intention, with curiosity, with the people you love in mind. In the last decade of her life, I became her travel planner. I’d research the destinations, handle the logistics, build the itineraries, and watch her light up when everything came together the way she’d imagined it. That was the first time I realized I was good at this. Not just the planning, but the listening. Understanding what someone actually wants from a trip, and making it real.
Memaw didn’t get to visit every country on her list. So now, when I travel somewhere she never reached, I bring her with me. She comes along in the only way she can, and I get to show her the world she spent her whole life falling in love with. I fell in love with travel through her, through her trips and the stories she carried home, long before any of it became my work.
Making It Official
By 2016, I’d made it official. Not because I loved logistics, though I’m embarrassingly good at them, but because I realized I had a specific skill. I could look at a person, listen to what they actually wanted (not what they thought they should want), and design a trip that felt like it was made for them. Because it was.
Today I work as a luxury travel advisor with Travel Design Co, specializing in three things I genuinely love: culinary and wine travel, luxury experiences that feel personal rather than performative, and group trips where everyone has a good time (yes, even the picky one).
I split my time between Tamarack, Idaho, where the mountains keep me grounded, and Tampa, Florida, where the Gulf reminds me why I love the water.
HOW I WORK
What Makes Me Different
I Travel. A Lot.
I don’t typically recommend places I haven’t been, and I don’t suggest restaurants I haven’t eaten at. When I tell you the second-floor corner room at a hotel in Rome has the best light in the building, it’s because I’ve stood in it. The rare exception is somewhere I send you through advisors I trust completely, and I’ll always say so. This isn’t a policy. It’s just how I’m wired. I want to see, taste, and feel a place before I send you there.
I Listen Before I Plan.
The first thing I do with every client isn’t pull out a map. It’s ask questions. How do you like your mornings? Do you want to be busy or do you want to breathe? Are you the kind of person who’d rather find the locals’ bar or the rooftop with the view? The answers to these questions matter more than the destination.
I Sweat the Details You Didn’t Know Existed.
The luggage forwarding service so you don’t have to drag suitcases onto the bullet train. The restaurant that requires a booking platform nobody outside Japan knows about. The pre-cruise hotel in a medieval Italian town instead of an airport Hilton. These are the details that turn a trip from ‘nice’ into ‘how did you even find this?’
A Little About Me, Off the Clock
When I’m not planning someone’s dream trip, I’m usually cooking something ambitious, drinking something interesting, or somewhere outside around McCall letting the mountains reset me. The kitchen is also where I get some of my favorite time with my granddaughter Charlie. We don’t get to see each other as often as I’d like, so the afternoons we spend baking macarons together (equal parts chemistry and patience) are some of the ones I hold onto most. And I play golf badly but enthusiastically.
We were first-time travelers to Europe and, being seniors, very anxious. Charity listened to our requests and somehow pulled off a three-week Poland, Germany, Amsterdam, and France vacation for us. She was always available to guide us through, and we give her an A.
Sheryl H. · First trip to Europe: Poland, Germany, Amsterdam & France
This is the third time I have used Charity’s services. We have done Italy, the Netherlands, the Caribbean, and now Norway. She goes above and beyond, and she travels herself, so she knows what she’s doing and is not just sitting behind a desk. Highly recommended.
Penelope L. · Italy, the Netherlands, the Caribbean & Norway
Ready to Plan Something Together?
Every trip I plan starts with a conversation. Tell me where you want to go… or tell me you have no idea and just know you need a trip. Either way, I’d love to hear from you.