James is a company director based in Christchurch. He runs, cycles seriously, follows Formula One, reads Hemingway, and cooks well. He arrived at this journey with a shortlist of hotels, a preferred airline, a set of Champagne houses he wanted to visit, and a clear sense of what he finds draining: queues, unnecessary complexity, and anything that requires effort to navigate when the effort could be directed elsewhere. Travel, for him, is an active undertaking. He does not want to sit still.
Fiona is an artist. She moves through the world differently: drawn to flea markets, vintage dealers, flowers, food, and the kind of patient digging that rewards a trained eye. She came with her own research too, accommodation options for Provence she had already found and annotated. They are not the same traveller. In this case, that is the whole point.
"He came in with more pre-research than most clients I work with. That tells you something about how he operates, and it shaped how I approached the brief."
James is a company director based in Christchurch. He runs, cycles seriously, follows Formula One, reads Hemingway, and cooks well. He arrived at this journey with a shortlist of hotels, a preferred airline, a set of Champagne houses he wanted to visit, and a clear sense of what he finds draining: queues, unnecessary complexity, and anything that requires effort to navigate when the effort could be directed elsewhere. Travel, for him, is an active undertaking. He does not want to sit still.
Fiona is an artist. She moves through the world differently: drawn to flea markets, vintage dealers, flowers, food, and the kind of patient digging that rewards a trained eye. She came with her own research too, accommodation options for Provence she had already found and annotated. They are not the same traveller. In this case, that is the whole point.
"What struck me about this brief was how much was already decided, and how clear they were about the difference between what they wanted to do together and what they each wanted separately. That clarity made everything easier to build."
James is a company director based in Christchurch. He runs, cycles seriously, follows Formula One, reads Hemingway, and cooks well. He arrived at this journey with a shortlist of hotels, a preferred airline, a set of Champagne houses he wanted to visit, and a clear sense of what he finds draining: queues, unnecessary complexity, and anything that requires effort to navigate when the effort could be directed elsewhere. Travel, for him, is an active undertaking. He does not want to sit still.
Fiona is an artist. She moves through the world differently: drawn to flea markets, vintage dealers, flowers, food, and the kind of patient digging that rewards a trained eye. She came with her own research too, accommodation options for Provence she had already found and annotated. They are not the same traveller. In this case, that is the whole point.
"The flea market question needed solving properly. The Marché aux Puces in Paris doesn’t work with their dates, and a Monday version at a fraction of its strength wasn’t worth giving them. Portobello Road on a Friday in London is the right answer: the serious dealers are present, the Saturday crowds are not."
James is a company director based in Christchurch. He runs, cycles seriously, follows Formula One, reads Hemingway, and cooks well. He arrived at this journey with a shortlist of hotels, a preferred airline, a set of Champagne houses he wanted to visit, and a clear sense of what he finds draining: queues, unnecessary complexity, and anything that requires effort to navigate when the effort could be directed elsewhere. Travel, for him, is an active undertaking. He does not want to sit still.
Fiona is an artist. She moves through the world differently: drawn to flea markets, vintage dealers, flowers, food, and the kind of patient digging that rewards a trained eye. She came with her own research too, accommodation options for Provence she had already found and annotated. They are not the same traveller. In this case, that is the whole point.
"The Belmond Pullman is one of those experiences that sounds almost too good until you are on it, and then it turns out to be exactly what it promised. For this pair, on the last full day in London before Fiona flies home: it belongs there."
