April 30, 2013
We are a tight knit, small group of adventure obsessed, food loving hotel hunters and experience gatherers. We love cities. We love countryside. We love beaches. We love mountains. We love tiny places you’ve never heard of and famous, world-renowned standbys. And, we happen to be travel agents. Our group is led by the seasoned (and saucy) Tracy Lonsdale, a travel vet who learned the craft early under the tutelage of her mother, Gretta Walsh an English rose who’s clients were The Jackson’s, Elton John, Madonna, Lionel Ritchie and other Hollywood Walk of Famer’s. Not to drop names or anything, but we’ve carried the torch with our own list of bold facer’s like Katy Perry, KD Lang, Patti Smith and Jackson Browne and have been on Travel and Leisure’s A List Spa Specialist list . We specialize in luxury experiential travel. We know a few things about personal requests, and about making a trip that suits your proclivity for aged cheese, or, need to do nothing at all for days at a time. across an entire continent. Need to buy a script at the last minute in Oslo? No problem. Got a meeting with a South American financier? We’ll get you there pronto and hook you up with insider spots for café con leche.
But enough about us; It’s actually all about you.
We are a full-service boutique travel agency. We can do everything from a car service to the airport (the kind that knows the best routes and has a paper waiting on your seat), to finding a Sicilian yoga retreat where meditation is as important as ravioli. We know a little Moroccan hotel that serves pots of fresh mint tea while your feet soak in rose water. And a decadent polo ranch in Cordoba that sits on 200 acres of untouched Argentinean pampas (and you should see their wine cellar). We understand that one persons Chateaubriand in a 17th century French castle is another’s sea kayak through Patagonia. We know our way around the first class cabins of every airline plus who to call when they say “fully booked,” but we can also hook you up with a dirt cheap coach fair, bargain-but-fabulous New York hotel and point you to the best black and white cookies in the city. We know where to send someone who thinks they’ve seen it all. We’ve worked with groups of 400 and made sure the 10,000 details were checked, and double-checked, to parties of one who’s complex itineraries make the Secretary of State look like a homebody.
We believe in good sheets, good manners and good wine. But we also love a hole in the wall, roughing it on a game drive in the Masai Mara, or riding ponies across a moving Wyoming river and getting our behinds wet. There’s a place for all of it.
It’s our belief that a great restaurant may or may not have three stars behind its name, but that shouldn’t determine its worth. Those that we’ve discovered, from one deep in the Andean mountains to the side streets of Knotting Hill, through the winding vineyards of Napa and in a dozen unknown spots south of the border, have been judged by the caliber of food, standards of service and the quality of the owner. We know lots of them by name, and even where they buy their chickens.
Let’s just say, we get out from behind our desks plenty, and will only recommend something we know and trust.
We are not travel snobs but we also admit that anything mediocre doesn’t interest us. We relish a trip to a local charcuterie as much as a decadent vacation in the Seychelles.
A picnic at 9,000 feet with snow clamps can be just as elegant as high tea at Claridges. You say tomato and we say, which variety? We love what we do and want you to love every step you take outside your home base. We take care of people. This is really what we do best.
From guys in suits to guys in tight pants, we help them all get from A to B to C and make sure they eat well along the way. Touring artists, corporate executives and creative types are all part of the Karma tribe. From business jaunts to leisure retreats, spa getaways to outer limits adventures – if you can think of it, we can do it. Yeah, our clients are rock stars and models and Hollywood icons, but mostly they’re ordinary people who want an extraordinary experience.
We come from the old school of travel that doesn’t need technology to keep an itinerary on track. We’ve kept a traveling band on tour with no operational computers or email, through multiple cities and connections, without missing a beat. We’ve handled an airline’s overbooking without a client ever feeling the angst of no-seat-on-a-very-important-flight. The simple truth is we’ve been doing this a long time and know a lot of people, in a lot of cities, countries and villages (some back alley’s, too). There are new places, old places, cool places, and out-of-the-way places. Our job is to make getting whatever you want, wherever you want, easy. And if you can’t think of what to do, not to worry, we have ideas galore.
