This is why I write...

For me, its personal.

My very first travel experience was as a 7 year old, being dropped off at Wellington Airport by my parents to take a 1 hour flight by myself, north to Auckland. I was set to visit my Auntie & Uncle for the Easter weekend. The excitement, the responsibility, and the trepidation all wrapped up into a mélange of emotion that made my 7 year old self feel important, mature, and very grown up.

Full credit goes to the Air New Zealand staff who looked after me well, and everything went smoothly!

Fast forward a couple of decades, I'm now on Waikiki beach at a Travel Conference, listening to Bill Clinton speak. At the time, I'm a cog in the impersonal machine of a large corporate Travel Agency, and the prize for becoming a "high performing" Travel Agent in Australia was to go to Global Conference. Politics aside, something that Mr Clinton spoke about stuck in my brain, and stayed with me ever since. "The more you encourage, support, and assist your guests to see the world, the more places they go, the local food they eat, the more conversations they have with regular folk, they will realize that as human beings we are more alike than we are different. We all really want the same things. Tasty food, a cold beer after a hard weeks work, safety for your family, peace and prosperity".

In short, the more connected we are as a planet, the less chance we have of going to war - surely a worthwhile ideal.

With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, online booking apps, and giant multi-country travel corporations pushing people towards ever more corporatized and packaged products - it's very difficult to see the wood for the trees. A pet hate of mine is reading in flight magazines. The banality of the prose, the fake reviews paid for by hotels and airlines, the corruption of the journalistic integrity of the so called "travel writers" is a recipe for misery. The last thing I want to do is read yet another destination or hotel review describing something as "the best ever, the service was perfect, you must book this now". Any thinking reader with a couple of brain cells to rub together knows this is just corporate speak and they are being sold down the river.

My involvement in in this strange industry that I've come to love has given me the opportunity to stay in a cornucopia of some of the finest properties in the world, and to have experiences spanning the globe I could not have afforded on my own dime. For better or for worse, this has given me a much more realistic (some would say cynical) view on what is really worth it, and what may only be big business smoke and mirrors.

My hope is that as you read my writing, you'll appreciate the "no holds barred" approach, and your decisions to travel and stay in both local, boutique & and ultra luxury properties will be a little more well informed.

You may choose to use my articles as well researched information only, and book your trips with your own agent or your preferred AI booking platform - please suit yourself!

For those readers would like to reach out to me personally, and engage my services as an advisor, especially to secure VIP inclusions at the properties I write about - please fill out the booking form and I'm more than happy to be at your service. Peter G