How to brief a travel company so you get a real quote

The six things that belong in every brief

A brief is not a wish list, it is a set of constraints. Companies design around constraints. Give them six:

• Destination, and why — “Greece” is a region; “Cyclades, mainly Naxos and Paros, we want to swim” is a brief.
• Dates, or a two-week window. Availability drives everything.
• Who is travelling — ages matter, mobility matters, so does whether it is two couples or one family.
• What you need — stay, transfers, guide, activities, or the whole thing.
• Total budget range for the trip, not per person per night.
• Two or three non-negotiables, and be honest about which they are.

Why the budget range matters more than anything else

Companies do not read a budget as a target to hit. They read it as a service level. €2,000 for two people over a week in Italy means three-star and public transport; €6,000 means four-star boutique and private transfers; €14,000 means something else entirely. Without the number, the company either quotes the middle and is wrong for you, or asks a clarifying question and loses two days.

Withholding a budget in the belief that it prevents overcharging is the most common and most costly mistake travellers make. In a marketplace with comparable, competing offers, the mechanism that protects your price is competition — not information asymmetry.

What does not help

Three things add length without adding signal: adjectives without specifics (“something authentic and special”), a request for “your best price” with no scope, and a list of twenty maybe-destinations. All three tell a company that answering carefully is unlikely to be rewarded, which is exactly the wrong incentive to create.