Wayfare is a private travel studio. You tell us the feeling — slow, wild, unhurried, alive — and two of our designers build the whole journey from a blank page. No two trips are ever the same.
Every Wayfare trip includes
private guides · 24/7 on-trip support
· every booking handled · fully financially protected
A real Wayfare itinerary: a temple before the gates open, a tea house with no sign, a ryokan dinner served only to you. Designed, not booked.
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Most travel begins with a catalogue — a fixed route, a set of dates, a price. Wayfare begins with a conversation. We ask what a good day looks like to you, what you'd happily skip, who is coming, and how you want to feel when you finally stop moving. Then we build a journey that has never existed before.
Founded in 2009 by two designers who were tired of itineraries that felt borrowed, the studio has stayed deliberately small — never more than nine designers, each with one region they know down to the unmarked door. We don't chase volume. We design roughly three hundred journeys a year, and we'd rather turn a trip away than rush it.
Everything is handled. Permits, transfers, the guide who knows the chef, the room that catches the morning light. You arrive with one number to call and nothing to arrange — and the trip is yours alone, not a departure you happen to share.
a catalogue this is not — every Wayfare trip is built from scratch for one set of travelers
Two weeks chasing the autumn colour north — temple gardens before the gates open, a ryokan in the alps, and dinners booked by someone who knows the chef.
Estancias, glacier crossings and the Paine circuit at a walking pace — a private guide who reads the weather, and a lodge waiting each night.
The Mara and a private conservancy off the map — a tented camp lit by lantern, a guide tracking on foot, and breakfast wherever the herd moves.
Shown for inspiration; every Wayfare trip is built from scratch. Prices and lengths above are typical of what we have designed — yours will be its own.
No portals to fill in, no forms. You speak to a designer, and the trip takes shape between you — usually over two to four weeks.
A relaxed hour — no cost, no commitment. We listen for the feeling you're after, who's traveling, and the rhythm you want.
Your designer returns with a complete journey — route, stays, guides, the days drawn out — and a clear, itemised budget.
We revise as many times as it takes — swap a region, slow a week, raise or lower the budget — until the trip is unmistakably yours.
We book everything and hand you one number. A designer is reachable 24/7 for the length of the trip — wherever you are.
A short, honest list. We'd rather tell you plainly what we handle — and what stays your call — than bury it in fine print.
A journey designed from scratch
Route, pacing and a day-by-day itinerary built around your brief — never a fixed template.
Every booking handled for you
Hotels, transfers, trains, permits and reservations — confirmed, paid and assembled into one document.
Private guides and drivers
Local experts we know personally — vetted, briefed on you, and yours alone for the day.
24/7 on-trip support
One number, any time zone. A real designer answers — to re-route a delay or move a dinner.
Full financial protection
Every payment is bonded and held in a protected client account — covered before, during and after.
International flights
We'll advise on routings and timing, and book them if you'd like — or you may use your own miles and book direct.
Travel insurance
Required for every traveler — we'll recommend a trusted broker, but you hold your own policy.
Visas and passports
We tell you exactly what each border needs and by when — the paperwork itself is yours to file.
Free days, kept free
We design in unscheduled mornings on purpose. What you do with them — a market, a long lunch, nothing at all — is yours.
Spending money
Shopping, tips and the odd unplanned splurge sit outside the budget — we'll give you a realistic daily figure to plan around.
representative of what we secure — your stays are chosen for your trip, not picked from this page
Tatami rooms, a private cedar bath, and a multi-course kaiseki dinner brought to you — seven keys, generations of the same family.
Floor-to-ceiling views of the massif, a wood fire, and guided walks that leave from the door each morning.
Canvas suites lit by lantern, an open-sided mess tent, and a tracker who wakes you for the light — twelve guests at most.
A terraced lemon garden, a private chef on call, and a path of worn steps down to a quiet swimming cove.
We hold relationships with more than three hundred properties worldwide — and when the right room isn't a hotel at all, we'll find you the house.
Each Wayfare designer owns one region — not a brochure of it, the real thing: the back roads, the seasons, the people who answer when they call.
Lead designer · Japan & Korea
Grew up between Kyoto and Kanazawa; spends three months a year walking new routes so the rest of us don't have to guess.
Lead designer · Patagonia & the Andes
A former mountain guide from Puerto Natales — he knows which estancia has the better horses and which pass clears first in spring.
Lead designer · East Africa
Nairobi-born, a decade in conservation before Wayfare — she places guests in camps that pay the communities they sit on.
We asked for a trip that felt quiet. They gave us one we still talk about three years on.
Bespoke has no fixed price because it has no fixed shape. What follows is a guide — the budgets our clients typically land on once a trip is fully designed, not a quote.
We charge a planning fee of $650, taken at the first call. It covers the design itself — the research, the proposal, the unlimited rounds of refining. If you go on to travel with us, the fee is credited in full against your trip. If our proposal isn't right for you, it's the only thing you've spent.
To confirm a designed journey we ask for a 25% deposit; the balance is due sixty days before departure. Every payment is financially protected from the moment it leaves your account.
One country, an unhurried pace — a honeymoon, an anniversary, a first trip together.
Two or three regions, paced for younger travelers, with rooms and guides chosen for the group.
Several countries, eight to twelve travelers, private transport throughout — a milestone, taken slowly.
A guide, not a quote. Your designer gives you a precise, itemised budget with the proposal — and will happily build the same trip to a higher or lower figure.
Drawn from 1,914 post-trip reviews, every one written by a traveler whose journey we designed.
“Aya designed a fortnight in Japan around one sentence — that I wanted to feel unrushed. Every morning was open, every dinner was somewhere I'd never have found. The proposal arrived faster than I could second-guess it.”
Priya Anand
Kyoto, the Nakasendo & Kanazawa · Nov 2024
“Our flight into El Calafate was cancelled at midnight. I called the on-trip line half-asleep; by breakfast Mateo had re-routed two days and moved the lodge. We never lost an hour of the trip.”
Daniel Okonkwo
Patagonia, end to end · Feb 2024
“We are eleven people across three generations and four diets. Naomi held all of it — a camp that worked for my father at eighty and my niece at nine. I have planned exactly nothing since.”
Sofia Marchetti
Kenya & Tanzania, a family safari · Aug 2023
“I came with a vague idea and a real fear of being sold a package. What I got back was a journey that read like it had been written for me — three rounds of changes, never once a sigh.”
Henrik Lindqvist
The Dolomites & the Amalfi Coast · Sep 2024
Still wondering something? The first call is free, and there is no question too small for it.
It depends entirely on the journey, but to give you real figures: a week for two travelers usually lands between $9,000 and $22,000, and a two-week family trip between $28,000 and $60,000 — both excluding international flights. Larger or longer journeys scale from there. The honest answer is that we can design a wonderful trip across a wide range; tell your designer the budget you have in mind on the first call, and they'll build to it rather than around it.
For a one or two-week trip, three to five months is comfortable — enough time to design properly and to hold the rooms that matter. Multi-generational journeys and peak-season travel (the Mara migration, Japan in autumn, Patagonian summer) are better started six to ten months out, because the best camps and guides book early. That said, we have designed beautiful journeys on six weeks' notice; if your dates are close, call us anyway and we'll tell you honestly what's still possible.
The fee is $650, paid at the first call, and it covers the design work itself: a dedicated designer, original research, a complete written proposal, and unlimited rounds of revision until the journey is right. It is not an extra on top of the trip — if you go on to travel with us, the full $650 is credited against your final balance. If our proposal isn't the trip for you, the fee is all you've spent, and you owe nothing further.
It is some of our favourite work. Roughly a third of the journeys we design each year carry three generations or more — a milestone birthday, a reunion, a grandparent's last big adventure. We are practised at pacing a single trip for an eighty-year-old and an eight-year-old at once: ground-floor rooms beside the ones with bunk beds, gentle mornings, a guide briefed on who tires and who never sits still. Tell us who's coming, and we'll design around all of them.
You call one number, at any hour, and a Wayfare designer answers — not a call centre. A cancelled flight, a closed road, a change of heart about tomorrow: we handle it while you carry on. Behind that line, every booking is financially protected, so a supplier failure never becomes your problem or your cost. In sixteen years we have re-routed storms, weathered strikes and quietly fixed a great many small things — usually before our travelers noticed.
We can, and often do. For internal flights, trains and transfers within your journey, we always handle the booking — they're woven into the itinerary. For long-haul international flights, it's your choice: many clients prefer to use their own air miles or a corporate travel desk, so we leave those open and simply advise on the best routings and timing. Tell your designer which you'd like, and we'll arrange accordingly.
The first call is an unhurried hour, free, and asks nothing of you. Bring a feeling, a rough season, the people coming — we'll bring the journey.
no obligation · planning fee credited to your trip · fully financially protected