I recommend from three places: somewhere I've been, someone I know, or an advisor I trust who's been. If a destination isn't in one of those three yet, I'll say so instead of writing around it. That's the whole standard, and this page is me holding myself to it in public.
Where I have the most firsthand detail and the most opinions — including which rooftop is actually the best one, which is a thing you only learn by getting it wrong a few times first.
48 Hours in Paris at Kimpton St Honoré — A Right Bank Reset Before CannesPublished on my Fora profile
Beijing and Paris, with Los Angeles in 2028. The city you booked is never the city that exists during a tournament — the blocks move, the timing is its own problem, and I'd already lived in Beijing before I watched it turn into somewhere else for two weeks.
A semester in Beijing and a Chinese minor. I'd arrived there once before by train, from Moscow.
More than half of everything I book, and the half nobody asks about. Ten years in Northern California gave me the western half — the Pacific Northwest, the desert, the coast — and I book the Northeast and the South just as often.
The date is fixed before anything else is, which means the real work is what's still available that week — and where the money goes when the occasion is the whole reason you're going.
Everyone is going for the same fixed reason, and none of it is one booking. Rooms that are actually near each other, arrivals spread over three days, and one person who shouldn't have to be the one chasing it.
Every four years my extended family does a reunion in Europe, eighty to a hundred and fifty of us. I don't organize that one. I go — which is where you learn what actually breaks at that size.
Everybody says they're flexible, and everybody is picturing a slightly different week. Most of the job is getting that out in the open before anyone has paid for anything.
Two people who've had the same conversation four times and still haven't booked. I'll bring back three options, tell you which one I'd book, and you can still tell me I'm wrong.
Building toward
I've been, and I lived in Beijing before that. What I don't have yet is the supplier bench I'd want behind a trip I was charging you for. That's what I'm building.
I've been there, but I'm not ready to sell it yet.
Having been somewhere isn't the same as being able to build you a trip there. That's what the three sections above are for.
Tell me anyway. I'll give you a straight answer about whether I'm the right person for it this year, or whether the right move is an introduction to someone on my bench who is. Either way you get a real answer instead of a pitch.
Tell me about the tripIncluding the ones I've just told you I'm still building toward. I'd rather have the conversation than let you assume.