Kate Labourdette

Kate grew up in Indiana as the person in the family who planned the trips. Not the one who was asked to; the one who did it anyway, with a folder, weeks before anyone else was thinking about it.

She spent years forecasting financial projections for a Fortune 100 company. She was good at it, and it left her restless. Then a trip to Cuba rearranged her priorities, the way a trip occasionally does when it’s the right one at the right time.

She now plans travel full-time from Skaneateles, New York, as an independent affiliate of Brownell. Brownell is North America’s oldest travel agency and a top-five Virtuoso producer, which is the reason a one-person practice can put your name in front of a general manager in Lisbon and have it mean something.

What working with her is actually like

There is no account team. Kate reads your inquiry, runs the discovery call, writes the proposal, books everything, and is the person on the other end of the phone while you’re away. The finance background shows up in the parts you don’t see: the budget is agreed before a single hotel is proposed, and the proposal comes in on it.

She hasn’t been everywhere, and you should be skeptical of an advisor who says otherwise. What she has is a vetted network of destination specialists on the ground in every region she plans, and the judgment to know when a place is worth your one trip this year and when it isn’t.