I started Aster Travel Design after eleven years in travel operations, the half of the industry where a closed runway turns into three phone calls at 2 a.m. I moved groups across borders, rebuilt itineraries the night before departure, and learned that what separates a good trip from a stressful one is slack: time built into connections, a hotel that matches how people actually sleep, one reserved table in a city that fills up in October. When I could no longer describe my job without mentioning spreadsheets first, I moved to the design side and opened the studio in Portland, Oregon.
The studio has since designed 520 trips for 1,240 travelers across 38 countries, which comes to about 3,900 nights away from home. I keep those figures less as a scoreboard than as evidence of what holds up: routes people would repeat, transfers that still worked when a flight ran late, itineraries that still made sense on day nine when everyone was tired.
How the studio works
Every project starts with a conversation, not a catalog. I ask what you want the trip to feel like at the end, what went wrong on journeys before, and what you would rather never repeat. From there I draft a route, explain why each day sits where it does, and revise with you until the plan matches your pace and your budget. Booking follows the design. Nothing is held until you have seen the whole shape of the trip.
Who we work with
Couples planning a long first stretch in Europe, families of six to twelve, groups of friends who want one plan instead of twelve opinions, and travelers who have booked every leg themselves for twenty years and would rather not research another hotel. About a third of our work arrives as a referral, which is the number I watch most closely.
What you get
- An itinerary built around your dates, budget and tolerance for early starts.
- First-hand ground knowledge: we walk the districts we book, or check with people who live there.
- Trade rates and contracted space that never show up on booking sites.
- One contact before, during and after travel, including when plans change mid-route.
- Blunt edits when a route looks better on paper than it plays out at 6 a.m.
What we promise
A plan we would take ourselves, and straight answers when something moves: which connection to take if the first one goes, who to call at 3 a.m. local time, what a policy covers and what it does not. We do not promise perfect weather or free upgrades. We promise a trip with room in it, and a designer who picks up the phone. When plans change, you hear it from the person who built the route, in plain language, with the next two options already lined up.