What is a travel escort? A companion you choose not for an evening, but for a weekend away, a business trip or an entire holiday. The best moments far from home are the ones you can share with someone: a lane that opens onto the sea, a dish you were not expecting, a snatch of music drifting out of a courtyard. On your own, you file them away for later; in company, you savour them as they happen.
That is the whole idea: an accomplice with whom to linger at the market, get pleasantly lost in an old town and put the world to rights long after dessert. And who, above all, looks forward to leaving quite as much as you do.
We have been arranging these stays for more than twenty years, and a few lessons have stuck: what sets them apart from a single date, how to choose the woman who will come with you, and how to go about it so that everything runs smoothly. The practical questions, budget included, are answered at the end of the article.
What Changes When You Travel with an Escort
An evening, however long, remains a date: it has a beginning, an end, and both of you on best behaviour. Going away together is cut from different cloth. You take your time over coffee, follow a pretty street with no idea where it leads, change your mind as to what comes next. You become yourselves rather sooner, on both sides.
For your companion is not there as an extra. Far from trailing a step behind, she discovers the city with you, lingers in front of a façade, insists you really must taste this. Over time, that kind of pleasure cannot be acted. It shows, and it is catching.
Then come the things one never does alone. Booking the restaurant you have been hearing of for years. Hiring a boat and not coming back until sunset. Finally walking into the museum you put off on every visit. With two of you, the plans get rewritten.
And because time is no longer short, it lets in what a date of a few hours sometimes has to hurry: the conversation picked up where it was left, the hand that settles without a thought, desire that has stopped watching the clock. Those who know the girlfriend experience will recognise the register, with mornings thrown in.
The Second Day
The first evening resembles any other, and we have described elsewhere what to expect of it: you discover each other, you polish your sentences, and the pleasure is already there. The morning after is like nothing else.
By breakfast, nobody needs telling that you do not utter a word before the first coffee: it is understood. You, for your part, have watched your companion read the entire menu before choosing, only to order the fish after all. Nobody is performing any more, which is exactly why everything becomes easy: you walk at the same pace, fall silent without awkwardness, smile at some detail of the day before that would amuse no one else.
That is the moment clients bring back to us afterwards. Seldom the grand dinner, almost always something of no importance: a shower waited out under a porch, a siesta during which remarkably little sleeping was done, a terrace where the second coffee lasted until noon. No evening, not even the finest, can offer a second day.
Three Occasions, Three Rhythms
The Business Trip
Your days are spoken for; hers are free. While you sit in meetings, your escort explores, swims, reads, wanders a district you know only from the back of a taxi. By the time you close the laptop, she already knows where to take you. The week keeps its obligations, with something to look forward to from the morning on. In Tokyo, where a long-haul flight and the jet lag cut you off from all your bearings, the effect is immediate.
Should you need to appear as a couple, at a partners' dinner or a reception, how you introduce her is entirely your decision: a friend, your girlfriend, a colleague, a passing acquaintance. The story is agreed beforehand and kept to with perfect ease; the word escort has no reason ever to be spoken. Among your fellow diners, your guest is quite at home in the conversation, often in several languages.
The Weekend Away
Forty-eight hours, two nights: the simplest of escapes, and often the first. You leave on Friday, return on Sunday, and in between there is Rome, a room whose shutters open onto the rooftops, and nothing to do but whatever you feel like.
A weekend is also a fine way of getting acquainted before a longer stay. None of this is compulsory: many departures are first meetings too, with no other preamble. But if your diary allows, two days together, or simply a dinner, before sharing ten, are one more pleasure. And you will already know what to talk about on the plane.
As for the budget, see the FAQ at the foot of this page, or our article on what a high class escort costs; the full grid awaits you on the rates page.
The Holiday
A week, ten days, longer: the scale changes again. No timetable to keep; you get up when you wake. On Mykonos, that means a linen shirt, a novel read aloud to you over a pair of sunglasses, the sea once the beach has emptied, and dinner late, like everyone else there.
If you prefer somewhere of your own to a hotel, a villa, a chalet or a sailing yacht, the agency arranges that too, once the place has been agreed between you, your companion and ourselves. Our bespoke holidays page gives a glimpse.
Choosing Your Travel Companion
She is not chosen as one chooses company for a night out. For a few hours, a figure and a quick wit work wonders. Over five days, other things come into play, and they are the ones that will make the difference:
- Languages. Every profile lists those the escort speaks, and at what level; our gallery can be filtered accordingly. In Rome, a companion who orders in Italian changes the game: the waiter will forget you at once, and you will eat all the better for it.
- Rhythm. Early riser or night owl, tireless walker or devotee of the sun lounger: in the long run, agreeing on that matters rather more than a hair colour.
- Tastes. Fine dining, exhibitions, sailing, skiing: let us know what you enjoy doing, not merely whom you would like to look at.
- Conversation. A tête-à-tête feeds on one subject; a week calls for a hundred. Each of our escorts has another life, studies, work, curiosities of her own, and that life gives her plenty to say.
- Area of residence. Shown on every profile, it determines the transport, and therefore the expenses and the notice required.
- Intimate chemistry, finally. Last on the list, and by no means least. Several nights give it all the space it needs, and nobody need be coy about it. Our profiles nevertheless list no services: our article on the PSE explains why. If, on the other hand, you tell us precisely what you are after, we shall be able to point you to the person most likely to suit you.
There remains what the profiles do not say, and what we know: who makes do with a cabin bag, who already knows the city, who will get on with a man who works in the mornings. Describe your plans to us; we will tell you who.
From Idea to Departure in Six Steps
The format has a name, FMTY, and its rules have an article to themselves. In practice, it all comes down to six steps:
- Give us the occasion, the dates and the destination. A message of a few lines to begin with; the article devoted to booking sets out what it should contain.
- Clear the destination with the agency. Entry formalities, season, length of flight: we check that the plan is feasible for the woman you have chosen.
- Share the programme. A black-tie occasion, a day out at sea, some walking: enough to pack accordingly, and to arrive with the dress the occasion called for.
- Leave the booking of her tickets to us. The agency handles it from start to finish. Should you wish to see to them yourself, to use your air miles for instance, that is possible too, in agreement with us. You then make the journey together or meet at the destination, as you prefer.
- Settle the essentials in advance. A deposit amounting to 40 per cent, and the whole of the transport when we book it, confirm your request (details in our FAQ). The balance is likewise paid to the agency before departure or, if you choose, remitted in cash once the stay begins, provided the sum is within what customs rules allow one to carry.
- Give your real name when you confirm. For a first enquiry, your first name does very well. At confirmation it is different: a woman is leaving her everyday life to join you, and the agency must know whose company she will be keeping. In return, your companion's real name will be given to you: trust runs both ways.
That last point also has a very practical reason. Most hotels register everyone occupying a room, identity document in hand, and learning each other's name in front of the receptionist would be singularly lacking in naturalness. The hotel manager in Pretty Woman carried it off with some grace, by deciding that the young lady could only be his guest's "niece". Not every front desk has his tact.
Once there, the hotel, the restaurants and the outings are naturally yours to take care of. As for the room, one is enough, as for most of our bookings, unless you would rather have two. For a week or more, a suite or a second room is a courtesy that will be appreciated; it is never a condition.
Leave Room in the Programme
The getaways we still hear of years later have one thing in common: they were not full. The temptation is to plan too much, a visit in the morning, a lunch booked, somewhere else at night, as though every last minute had to earn its keep. The opposite is what works.
One great table a day, and the rest improvised. A late afternoon with no plan whatsoever, which will often prove the best. And, when the stay grows long, a few hours each to yourselves: you have calls to make, your Feline fancies a swim or a walk alone. Nothing imposed in that; you simply meet again with things to tell each other, a luxury a weekend cannot afford.
One last thing, which is not a rule: let her surprise you. She may have spotted a hidden bar, an exhibition, a cove. The men who travel in the best company are the ones who do not direct everything.
Do you have a trip in mind, still vague, with no fixed date? Tell us about it as it comes to you: city or sea, three days or ten, the mood you wish it to have. We will reply with suggestions of companions, what their diaries allow, and a complete budget.
