Most people want to travel more authentically and benefit from the expertise of local experts. But how do you book with a local expert on the other side of the world? Is your money safe? What happens if something goes wrong? Can you still get financial protection? These are key questions raised by Kated Travel Podcast listeners, answered by your host Stephen Bailey.

Travelling Locally, Sustainably And Creatively

Today, we are travelling towards experiences that are more local, more sustainable, more creative, more away from the norm. I’m talking about travel designers and how you as a traveller can connect with them. If you haven’t heard the show before, or perhaps you haven’t heard that episode, check out episode 14, where I talk about the difference between a travel designer and a travel agent. And the key difference is, a travel agent is based in the same place you are. They can send you anywhere. They can send you to a place where they are considered a specialist.

And a travel designer is based in the country you are traveling to. So, they are your host. They are the person who is receiving you in the place you are travelling to. And they are only specialist in the place they live. For me, and for all of us at Kated, we believe that is where the true travel expertise can be found. We can always find more, do more, be different, go beyond the average, the mundane, when we are with a local — a local travel designer. But there is a big problem, and that problem is trust. Why do we not always travel with the local safari operator in Tanzania?

Finding The Local Travel Designer You Can Trust

Why do we not book our trip across Australia with the travel designer from Perth? Why do we not book our holiday direct with the travel designer and his company in Vietnam, or Peru, or Canada, or anywhere? And the main reason is, it’s really hard to trust. It’s really hard to send 10,000 pounds, 10,000 dollars, 10,000 euros — even a hundred euros — halfway across the world for your holiday. Even worse than that, you make a booking and there is no one there.

How can you trust that this booking is actually going to go ahead? Anyone on the Internet can claim that they are great and you’ll love a great time. A lot of people can create fake reviews. So, unless you get a very personal recommendation, it’s very difficult to trust that local supplier. And that is why for centuries, for 150 years, people have travelled with travel agents. We go to a travel agent and we rely on the travel agent picking the right supplier. And within that, inherently, we’re already trusting the travel supplier. We’re trusting that the agent got it right. And we’re trusting that when we turn up, the supplier is going to be there.

The whole idea behind Kated is, you have this direct connection. So as a traveller, you can go direct to the travel supplier. It makes it more local, you get closer to the source, you cut out middlemen, you cut out corporates, more of your money stays in the destination. So it’s more sustainable. But how do you know you’ve got the best travel designer? In the case of Kated, well, you speak with a travel designer before you make the trip. So, you speak multiple times with the travel designer to create your perfect itinerary.

And the beauty of it is, after creating and booking the itinerary, when you land it’s the travel designer greeting you. If you book with a travel agent, an agent has only got a set number of products, a set number of options. And after you’ve left, well, it’s not anything to do with the agent really, it’s all about the supplier. And you get greeted by somebody you’ve never met before. So, how is that person supposed to know your very unique desires? But what if something goes wrong? Well, that is why we started Kated.

Your Money Sits In A Trust Fund

In the UK, the law is very strict. Every trip you take has to have the financial support, so that if it gets cancelled, you immediately get your money back. Now, a lot of travel agents are trying to get around that and not giving the money back. But legally, when you book a trip in the UK, you are protected. Every trip you book is protected in a way that the money is not spent until your trip is completed. Travel agents either have a bonding system to do this, or they have financial failure insurance, or like Kated and some others, it’s a trust fund.

So, you pay for a trip. The money sits in a trust account. And when you finish the trip and everything’s fine, then the money gets released from the trust account, and it goes to the travel designer. Simple — or at least we think it’s simple. The problem has always been, how does the travel designer in Tanzania or Australia or Peru or Japan get set up legally within the UK? That’s a lot of paperwork. That’s a trust account for perhaps only a few customers. That’s a lot of investment in somewhere they don’t really know. And that’s what we’re trying to bridge at Kated.

Travel Designers Can Connect Directly With Travellers

The other side of what we do with the platform is providing an opportunity for travel designers to connect directly with travellers and make it a secure process for both sides, so travel designers don’t need to invest incredible amounts of resources to access UK travellers. They can focus on doing what they do best — designing trips, hosting travellers, showing people an extraordinary time — and travellers can focus on what they really want, because they can go straight to the source, miss out the middleman, not only save money, but also ensure that what they want is what they’re going to get when they arrive.

Kated is incorporated, registered in the UK and we have a quality assurance. The way it works is: first, we have a complete vetting process with all travel designers. We want to know their industry reputations, we dig deep into these people to find out what can they offer? Is it something extraordinary? And really are they going to offer it a hundred percent of the time to a five star standard? Secondly, that money you pay is held in a trust account. So the supplier, the travel designer, is not going to get your money until the trip is complete. So if anything happens, for any reason, you can get your money back straight away.

Unlike some travel agents in the UK that have — some have not been paying, but some customers and travellers have been waiting six months to get refunds, even though it’s within the terms and conditions.

A Money-Back Guarantee

Then number three, we offer mediation. We are there to support you, to support the travel designer, to make sure it’s a great trip and it’s a good process for everybody. That is what we do as a platform, to make sure both sides are always happy. And we’re so confident that you are going to have a good time — you are going to have exactly what you’ve requested, exactly what is in your itinerary and more — that we offer a money-back guarantee.

So if you go on a trip with Kated, that you booked through Kated with the travel designer, and you come back and you’re not happy — speak to us, because we have got a money-back guarantee covering the first 10,000 of every trip.