Plan your next big trip with the research already done.

If your Trip Planning Questionnaire names one region, I build your Trip Compass with three trip options within it, with different bases and paces. If it names two regions, the Compass has two options in each. If you’re undecided, I ask a few follow-up questions about what you like and when you want to travel, then bring you four options in different regions.

Five things land in your inbox. The first is your Trip Compass, which arrives on its own, because you choose your trip from it. The other four, your Trip Blueprint, Prep Guide, companion spreadsheet and map, are built for the trip you choose and arrive together.

The Trip Blueprint. The manual for actually doing the trip. Every base gets its own chapter: where to stay, with a recommendation and an alternative, and what you give up either way. The activities worth your time at each base, matched to the interests you gave me, not a generic top-ten list, with what they cost and how and when to book them. How you get around once you are there, and how you get to the next base. Where the nearest hospital is, and which local emergency numbers actually work. Then Your Booking Guide, which lists everything that needs booking in the order it needs doing, and a card you can print and carry.

Blueprint length depends on your trip. Every base gets the same depth, whether the trip has three bases or six.

The Prep Guide. Everything between your front door and the departure gate. Booking windows, insurance timing, documents, what to pack and what to leave. It also covers items that are easy to miss until it is too late to act on them: what your own government says about where you are going, quoted and dated, what to raise with your travel clinic for your particular route, and the health and safety points specific to your destinations rather than generic travel advice.

The companion spreadsheet. This one is for anyone who would rather run the trip electronically than on paper. It is a full working summary of your itinerary: every booking with its dates and status so you can tick them off as you make them, every place and activity I have recommended including the optional ones matched to your interests, the budget broken down stop by stop, and your emergency contacts. Everything that is in the Blueprint, in a form you can sort, filter and update as things firm up.

The map. Every place in your plan, pinned and labelled. Where you are staying at each base, the activities, the practical stops like pharmacies and cash machines, and the route between one base and the next. It opens straight into Google Maps on your phone, so on the ground you can see what is near you without flipping through a document. Copy it into your own Google account and you can add your own pins as you go. The same pins come as a map file (KMZ) too, a spare you’d only need for an offline map app such as Organic Maps, or a GPS unit.

The Compass compares destinations that may suit you. The Blueprint sets out how to carry out the one you choose. You have both before you book anything.

I make the recommendations, you make the bookings yourself, with whoever you like, so you keep full control.

Flights. I check every fare three ways: an aggregator for the market range, Google Flights or ITA Matrix for a working quote, and the airline’s own booking page to confirm you can book it at that price. The three must agree within ten percent, and the price I use is the airline’s. It’s standard economy with a checked bag, unless your Trip Planning Questionnaire asks for premium economy or business class; then I price that instead. It’s for dates that suit your plan, not the cheapest day in your travel window. Routings stay within the number of connections you set, and every connection leaves enough time to clear a border, collect a bag or change terminals without rushing. If a longer connection saves real money, I show you both and you decide. If you’d like a few days in a hub city on the way, I build that in.

Accommodation. Each base is checked across the major booking platforms, local rental agencies, long-stay sites and the property’s own rates. The price I use includes cleaning, service and platform fees and taxes, at a rate you could actually book.

Everything else. Ground transport prices come from the operators’ own pages. Government travel advice for your destinations is quoted word for word, with the date I read it.

That doesn’t guarantee a plan with no errors, and small ones can still get through. Every plan goes through a series of automated checks and independent reviews before I sign it off and send it. The full method is in the questions below.

Because an agent is paid by the hotels and cruise lines, not by you, so their advice naturally lives inside what is bookable in their network. I take no commissions and sell no bookings, so the only thing shaping your plan is your trip. You are paying for independent research and judgement, and the only person I answer to is you.

You can, and it will give you something impressive-looking in about thirty seconds. In an August 2026 survey of 1,000 US travellers commissioned by the travel concierge company Greetwell, about 1 in 6 of those who had used AI for travel were recommended a place, tour or activity that wasn’t real. It also knows nothing about your walking preferences, how much sustained activity you do or don’t enjoy, your budget or how you like to pace a day unless you tell it, and it can’t tell you which of its answers are wrong. I use AI too, but inside a process built to catch exactly that. Every price is recorded with where it came from and the date it was checked. Before a plan reaches you, it goes through about thirty automated checks on the arithmetic, dates, budget, links and map pins, and it’s read by separate AI reviewers that haven’t seen it before, looking for errors and contradictions. What they find gets fixed and checked again, and then I read the plan and sign it off. That’s the work you’d otherwise be doing yourself, in the evenings, hoping you’d caught everything.

No. I’m not a licensed travel agent and I don’t sell travel, so I can’t book or hold anything for you. That’s on purpose: I take no commissions, so nothing in your plan is there for anyone’s benefit but yours. You book your own trip, with whoever you like, and keep any points or perks. If you’d rather have someone handle all the booking and be on call during the trip, that’s a travel agent’s job, and I’ll tell you so.

Extended, independent travel: multi-week trips with several bases (the towns or areas where you stay), within one region of the world, planned and booked by you. A slower pace, a week or two in each place, suits it well, but a faster trip is fine too. It is built for active travellers 55 and over, though no one checks your ID. It is not for cruises, group tours, or the kind of trip where someone else manages you from a clipboard. If that is what you want, a good agent or tour operator is the right call, and I will say so.

AI tools do the heavy gathering of current, well-sourced research, faster and wider than I could manage by hand. Then the checking starts. Every flight price is read three ways: an aggregator for the market range, Google Flights or ITA Matrix for the working quote, and the airline’s own site to confirm it can be booked at that price. The three must agree within ten percent, and if they don’t, the figure isn’t used until the gap is resolved. Accommodation costs sit inside at least three real comparable listings with all fees included, never a teaser rate. Ground transport and activities are priced from the operator’s own published page. Exchange rates come from central banks, with the date noted. If your trip runs over your budget, the plan says so and shows you where it can come down. Before it reaches you, every plan goes through the checks described in the answer above, and I read it and sign it off.

By the size of the trip. CAD $1,300 covers up to three bases in one country, and a trip with one or two bases pays the same CAD $1,300. Each base beyond three adds CAD $250, and each country beyond the first adds CAD $150. A country only counts when you have a base in it. Your CAD $400 Compass fee is credited towards the Blueprint if you go ahead within 90 days of paying for it, and returning clients get CAD $150 off for 18 months after their last Blueprint. Every option in your Trip Compass shows its Blueprint price and what you’d pay after the credit, so you know the cost before you choose. If you change the bases or countries, the price is worked out again at the same rates.

A Trip Audit covers one region of the world. You can cross several borders and still be on one trip, as long as the route joins up on the ground: overland, by ferry, or with a short flight in between. A few weeks in Peru, then Thailand, then Portugal is three separate trips. Each needs its own research from scratch, so I quote it separately, before you pay anything.

A base is a place you stay two nights or more: a town, or a spot you explore the area from. A one-night stop on a travel day, such as a night near the airport before an early flight, is not a base and costs nothing extra. The same goes for countries: changing planes in another country, or one night there on the way, adds no country charge. A base is counted once for the whole group, not per person.

Yes. I prefer it when you have a country or region in mind, because I can focus the research there and bring more context to it than I could by picking four regions from around the world. Your Compass builds three distinct trip options within it, with different bases and paces, so you’re choosing with real information.

Either way, I want something real to work from before I build. If you’re torn between two areas, the Compass still works well for you as-is: I’ll build two real trip options in each, four total, so you’re comparing across the actual regions instead of choosing blind. If you have no region in mind, I’ll follow up with a short set of questions before building anything, instead of guessing at four options. A Compass needs a direction to work from: a region, or a clear picture of the activities you enjoy and when you’d like to travel. Without one, I wouldn’t be confident it would suit you.

Yes, and most people do. Your Compass options are starting points. Once you’ve read it, tell me what you’d change: swap a base, stay longer in one place and shorter in another, add or drop a stop, or combine parts of two options. We talk it through by email or on a call before I send your Blueprint invoice, so the plan I build is the trip you want. If the number of bases or countries changes, the Blueprint price is worked out again at the same rates, and you see the new figure before you pay.

You get the email with the link to your Trip Planning Questionnaire within minutes of paying for your Compass. The questionnaire itself takes 45 to 75 minutes to complete, and there’s no rush. Your Trip Compass usually follows within 7 to 10 business days of your completed questionnaire. Once you’ve chosen your trip and paid the Blueprint invoice, the rest of your Trip Audit, your Trip Blueprint, Prep Guide, companion spreadsheet and map, usually follows within another 7 to 10 business days.

About five to six months before you want to leave. Four months is workable; less than three gets tight.

From the day you pay, the planning itself usually takes four to six weeks: a few days for your questionnaire, up to two weeks for your Compass, however long you want to choose, then up to two weeks for your Blueprint. After that comes the booking, and that’s the part not to rush. For a long trip, have your flights and places to stay booked at least two months before you leave, and earlier for busy seasons and popular places, when the best-value options go first. Starting five to six months out leaves room for all of that, and for life getting in the way.

Your answers are used only to build your audit. They are never shared or sold.

1. Before you submit your Trip Planning Questionnaire: full refund of the CAD $400. If you’ve paid for your Trip Compass but haven’t submitted your Trip Planning Questionnaire yet, you can cancel at any time for a full refund. No questions, no hard feelings. Life happens!
2. After you submit your questionnaire: no refund. Once your completed questionnaire lands, the work begins: I’m analysing your answers, researching destinations, and building your Trip Compass. You still receive your Trip Compass, and if I can’t deliver it for reasons on my side, you get the CAD $400 back.
3. Trip Blueprint: no refund once your invoice is paid. The exceptions: if I can’t deliver your Blueprint, or it arrives more than 30 days after its latest delivery date, you get the Blueprint payment back in full.

Refunds are processed through Stripe back to your original payment method, and typically appear within 5 to 10 business days.

Now, if something has gone wrong on my end, that’s a different conversation. Email me at admin@sidetrakked.com and we’ll sort it out. I reserve the discretion to offer remedies beyond this policy on a case-by-case basis, and nothing here limits any remedy required by applicable law. I’m building this service on trust, and I intend to keep it that way. The full terms are on the Trip Audit Terms page.

Because there are more decisions to make, and fewer chances to change them once you’ve booked. On a one-week trip a bad hotel costs you two nights. On a six-week trip, a base that does not suit you costs you a month, and the deposits are usually gone. Add three or four bases, regional transport between them, seasonal weather that varies by coast, and insurance booking windows, and you are managing a project. Most people find a plan’s weak spots a few days into the trip. The audit finds them while everything can still be changed.