Because everything starts with your family specifically — not a template applied to you. Before I design anything, I want to understand who is in the group, what genuinely excites each person, what has disappointed you on previous trips, and what you are hoping this one feels like. That information is the foundation of every decision I make.

The families I work with span ages from six to twenty-seven. Wide age ranges, different energy levels, different ideas of a perfect day. What makes it work is not finding activities everyone tolerates, it is designing days where each person has at least one moment that feels built for them. A nine-year-old and a grandmother joining for a day trip in Tuscany are not competing priorities. They are two separate briefs within one trip, and I design for both.

The proof is in the families who come back. Some have travelled with me every year for six years. That does not happen because the first trip was adequate. It happens because it was exactly right.

As involved as you want to be. Some families arrive with a detailed vision and want me to execute it precisely. Others say “we want northern Italy, active, not touristy, you decide the rest” and hand me complete creative control. Both work. What does not work is me designing in isolation without understanding what matters to you.

The process starts with a planning call where I ask the questions that matter –  not just destinations and dates, but how your family travels, what has disappointed you before, and what would make this trip feel unlike anything you have done. From there the planning happens in stages, each one a separate conversation and a separate approval. Accommodation first, then logistics, then experiences and food. Nothing moves forward until you are confident the previous layer is right.

You bring the vision and the knowledge of your family. I bring the Italy expertise and the end-to-end execution. That division of responsibility is what makes the process feel effortless on your side, and what ensures the result feels completely yours. 

This is the question I spend the most time on, and the one I enjoy most. The assumption is that different ages mean compromise. In my experience, they mean a more interesting brief. A family with a six-year-old and a seventeen-year-old is not asking me to find the middle ground. They are asking me to design a trip where both of them have moments that feel personally chosen.

Before I design anything, I ask questions. Every member of the group is considered individually –  their interests, their energy levels, what genuinely excites them and what loses them completely. For larger or multigenerational groups I ask each person to rank their interests by priority, so when two family members want different things on the same day, I already know how to balance it.

The itinerary is then built from that information, not from a list of activities I rotate between families. Your specific tastes are not a complication. They are the brief.

I stay available throughout your trip, not as a call centre, but as the person who designed every day and knows every supplier. A delayed transfer, a last-minute change, an unexpected situation – it becomes my problem to solve, not yours. You do not spend your holiday managing problems. That is my job.

In practice, most of what could go wrong is identified and resolved before you travel. The detail-work that happens in the planning stage – checking logistics, flagging conflicts, building in alternatives – means genuine surprises are rare. When they do happen, you have someone in your corner who already knows the full picture.

One family travelled with me across multiple cities with several last-minute changes and some challenging decisions along the way. Their review afterwards: “She always made it easy on us. If I was taking another trip to Italy, Vanya would be my first call.” That is the standard I work to.

Most families who come to me have been to Italy before. They know Rome. They know Florence. They have had good trips. What brings them here is the gap between a good trip and one that felt completely right –  for every age, for the whole duration, without the moments where the day felt like it belonged to a different family.

There are two things I bring that self-planning cannot replicate. The first is fifteen years of living in Italy – the judgement to know which options are right for your specific family rather than generically well-reviewed, and the on-the-ground relationships that mean my recommendations are based on direct knowledge, not a listing.

The second is access. Some experiences I plan are not publicly available – private after-hours visits to iconic sites, exclusive access to museums and private villas through relationships built over years. These are not things you find by searching. They exist because of who you know and how long you have been here. That combination of expertise and access is what makes the difference between a trip you planned well and one you could not have planned yourself.