Last week we spoke with Amber Raleigh, President and founder of Effortless Vacations, about her luxury travel service. Raleigh (pictured, right) has a veteran’s point of view – she has 10 years of experience in the industry, most of those spent with Exclusive Resorts. She left Exclusive Resorts and founded Effortless Vacations in July of 2006. She has 15 clients so far and focuses on vacations in Colorado, Hawaii and Mexico with plans to expand to Florida and the Bahamas soon.

The basic idea behind Effortless Vacations is a comprehensive travel planning, booking and luxury concierge service. The company serves individuals and corporate clients, and is getting into destination wedding planning as well.

They charge a rate of $200 per hour for all the combined travel consulting. The hours needed depend on the trip you want – so an average vacation might require 5-15 hours of work, costing you roughly $1,000 to $3,000 total. Raleigh pointed out that this usually averages about 10% of the client’s overall vacation cost.

The services provided are personalized to individual needs and preferences. Services offered by Effortless Vacations include, but are not limited to:

• planning, booking air transportation
• booking ground transportation
• creating detailed itineraries
• searching for hotel accommodations, villas, wedding locations
• arrival greeting and check-out
• 24 hour on-call concierge and on-location concierge
• grocery shopping
• activity planning and reservations

How does Effortless Vacations differ from a travel agency?

Ms. Raleigh says travel agencies make money on sales commissions and kick-backs from hotels and other travel companies. A travel agent is therefore going to suggest the resort or activity company that pays them the best commission bonus.

Raleigh’s compensation comes from the client – she is therefore not motivated by booking commissions, but by satisfying her demanding clients.

Effortless Vacations joins a growing list of new hybrid travel services – a combination of concierge, travel agent and consultant. For the client, whose time is as valuable as their money, getting expert advice is crucial. This helps avoid a mediocre vacation, caused for example by staying at a 5 star resort that happens to have booked 800 of its rooms to a convention group.