Twenty-five years of knowing where to go, and how to get there well

I started in student travel. Overnight buses, twelve-bed dorms, and the discovery that the best day of any trip was usually the one nobody planned.

Over the next two decades I moved into luxury travel and spent many of those years at the executive level of one of the country's established agencies, designing journeys for people who expect everything to work. I learned which hotels are actually good, which guides actually know their city, and how much of a great trip depends on the parts a traveller never sees.

David Elliot Travel exists because those two halves belong together. My luxury clients kept asking for the thing my student travellers had for nothing: the real version of a place. And the travellers I sent out at twenty-two now have the means to go back properly, and no appetite for the hassle.

Who I built this for

Travellers who have done the famous things and want what comes after: depth, time, and access that takes a relationship rather than a booking engine. Usually a second or third visit to a country rather than a first. Often a milestone — an anniversary, a retirement, or the decision that waiting any longer is its own kind of cost.

What they have in common is a low tolerance for wasted time and generic luxury, and a clear sense of what a good day on their feet looks like. I design to that rather than around it.

Why a small practice

I take on a limited number of journeys a year because the access this depends on is personal. The people who open their workshops and cellars and dining rooms do it because they know me, and that does not scale to a call centre.

It also means you deal with one person from the first call to the final evening.