Conversations from the Planning Desk™

It Was Never About $200 a Day

A couple of months ago, a gentleman came to me with a very specific request.

He wanted to take a cruise to Hawaii, and he had one number firmly in mind:

$200 per day.

He was confident that the price existed because he had seen fares like it before.

I was considerably less confident.

I knew what cruises to Hawaii were currently selling for, and every time I looked, the numbers told me the same thing: we weren't there.

But there was more behind his request than finding a good deal.

He had cruised for years with his wife.

He lost her some time ago, and this trip was something he had chosen to do in honor of her.

Suddenly, $200 a day wasn't just a budget.

It was the number that would allow him to do something that meant something to him.

And he had extraordinary patience.

He believed the fare would eventually come.

So we waited.

I checked.

Nothing.

Time passed.

I checked again.

Still nothing.

There were plenty of moments when I wondered whether the price he remembered simply wasn't realistic anymore.

But he remained patient.

And I remained persistent.

Then, the other day, I checked again.

There it was.

The fare we had been waiting for.

After a couple of months of searching, the number had finally come.

I sent it to him.

It wasn't long before my phone rang.

There was genuine disbelief in his voice.

“Is this price for real?”

I told him it was.

He told me he needed a few days to think about it.

And then he called me back.

He was ready.

The cruise was booked.

Paid in full.

He was extremely happy, and he was incredibly appreciative that I had stayed persistent—that I hadn't forgotten what he was trying to accomplish simply because the price wasn't there when we first started looking.

And that's when this became one of those moments from behind the planning desk that stays with you.

Because depending on where you're sitting, the exact same moment can look completely different.

To someone who sees travel as purely transactional, this was a sale.

A cruise was booked.

A payment was made.

A transaction was completed.

But to the person on the other end of that phone, this wasn't simply a cruise.

This was something connected to a woman he had spent years traveling with.

It was connected to memories.

It was connected to loss.

And in his own way, it was an opportunity to continue something they had shared together while honoring someone who could no longer physically be there with him.

And to me?

It was simply an honor.

I've lost people who were incredibly important to me.

Thankfully, I have not experienced the loss of my wife, and I would never pretend to fully understand what that particular loss feels like.

But I do understand something about setting out to accomplish something in honor of someone you've lost.

And I know the feeling that can come when you finally accomplish it.

It's difficult to describe.

There's pride.

There's happiness.

There's sadness.

There's remembrance.

And somehow, all of those emotions can exist in the same moment.

It's priceless.

That's what I thought about after we finished the booking.

Not the commission.

Not the transaction.

Not even the fact that we finally found the fare.

I thought about how fortunate I was to have played a small part in helping someone create a moment that meant something deeply personal to him.

Sometimes being a travel advisor means comparing hotels.

Sometimes it means finding flights, arranging transfers, watching prices, solving problems and building itineraries.

And sometimes it means simply listening closely enough to understand why someone is asking you to help them travel in the first place.

Because there is often a story behind the trip.

This one happened to start with a man looking for a cruise to Hawaii for $200 a day.

But in the end...

It was never about $200 a day.

Some trips are vacations.

Some trips become memories.

And some trips carry the memories of people we love with us.

Those are the moments that remind me why I sit behind this planning desk.

And those are the stories worth telling.

Conversations from the Planning Desk™