In co-operation with Voyagebyme
The challenge when planning a trip is often to find the local gems. You want to discover that hidden little beach where you can be left alone from the charter tourists or those cosy little restaurants that serve local food that tastes homemade.
Tweet
Share
Share
Pin
Share
ShareOr what if you could even have the chance to have dinner with a local family and get an insight into their lives? We spoke to Charlotta Naumann who has brought a whole new concept of travelling to Sweden.
Table of contents
Travelling with local guides
In Europe, it has become more and more common for travel agencies to tailor trips for clients together with organisers at the destination. With the help of local guides, it is possible to organise exactly the experiences the client wants, and local knowledge makes it easy to avoid tourist traps and find unexpected gems.
The popularity of the concept is perhaps not surprising given that today's travellers often want to personalise their trip and see and experience more than just the most famous sights. Charlotta Naumannwho is an experienced traveller himself, thought the concept was missing in Sweden and therefore started the travel site. VoyageByMe.se.
The travel site offers a relatively wide range of destinations in Asia, Africa and Central America, with a local organiser in each country, ready to tailor a programme to the customer's needs.
The best travel experiences
When I talk to Charlotta about destinations and experiences, I realise that our best travel experiences are often the times when we get closer to the locals. Like when our tailors in Vietnam took us to the local karaoke bar and invited us home for dinner afterwards.
Or when we were invited to accompany a Swedish-Kenyan friend to a wedding in Kenya, and when we then went to her mum's house in the countryside. These are the experiences we remember the most!
Sometimes it's great when you're travelling alone, but it's not always the case that you get to meet the locals or find those undiscovered gems. Much more often, you end up in the tourist quarters and have to order from an expensive menu designed for tourists.
How it works
The way VoyageByMe works is that you choose a country you are interested in and send a request with your personal wishes. The travel site then puts together a proposal and connects the customer with both the company in Sweden (Charlotta) and the local organiser. You can of course talk on the phone, but you also get access to an online page where you can log in and discuss.
You usually buy your airline tickets yourself (although VoyageByMe can help if you wish). Booking airline tickets is usually the easiest part of organising an adventure trip. What takes time is looking up and comparing tour operators, booking excursions and calculating how long it takes to get from point A to point B.
For example, how do you know the quality of the roads and the best way to travel there? This is precisely the part that VoyageByMe specialises in helping with! You pay for the programme at the destination and can to some extent control the price depending on the standard of hotels etc.
New way of travelling
We have not tried TravelByMe ourselves, but we think the concept sounds interesting. Today it is relatively easy to book flights and hotels yourself. However, it is not always so easy to arrange those genuine experiences on site.
Perhaps it will become more and more common to book the flight yourself, but use people with local knowledge to organise the programme on site. What do you think? Is this the future of travelling?
You might also like:
How did Swedes travel in 2020? - travel barometer 2021
View from the cockpit - a different kind of air travel
How do Swedes travel? - Vagabond's travel barometer 2022
Popular destinations in 2023 - according to Ticket Collection
Film and TV series shooting locations - 10 places to visit
The travel planning stage - Aunt Anna and Googling
English (UK) 
Svenska 
Deutsch 
Suomi 
Polski
åsa in åsele says:
It certainly sounds interesting
A new concept in adventure 🙂
27 February 2018 - 7:15
Christian says:
Great concept!
27 February 2018 - 8:13
Mr Steve says:
Invited to dinner at the home of an ordinary family in a small village in rural Cyprus, an unplanned overnight stay at the home of a family on a God-coloured island in the Greek archipelago, invited to a wine tasting at the home of a winemaker in the French countryside. Such experiences are etched in my mind and now, reading your post, I am reliving some of those moments. Thank you for that! Just what I need on a grim February day like this.
27 February 2018 - 8:48
Helena says:
What great experiences Steve! I can only agree. The strongest experiences from our travels almost always include encounters with cultures and people in some way. Now I remember, for example, when we were invited for dinner in a small village in Sardinia and walked around the local shops and bought locally produced meat and vegetables 🙂.
27 February 2018 - 13:43
Ama de casa says:
Interesting, definitely. But I think I prefer to organise my own trips. Thanks to the internet, I feel that you are no longer "in the hands" of the travel agents as it used to be. The planning itself is like half the journey. But on the other hand, we have plenty of time to be able to do it 🙂.
27 February 2018 - 9:00
Helena says:
We're also quite used to sewing together trips, so I understand what you mean. If I would like help, however, it is precisely on site, to find those golden grains that are not so easy to find.
27 February 2018 - 14:28
Ditte says:
A good concept, I think. And if you don't have much time or are not so keen on travelling, this service is even better. (If you have more time, it is easier to create meetings yourself).
Thinking a bit like Ama here. But to get even more suggestions than those you find in more unknown places is very good.
27 February 2018 - 10:26
Helena says:
Agree with you about this with time Ditte! Planning trips takes more time than you might think, so it does matter if you have a lot of it or not 😉.
27 February 2018 - 14:32
Britt-Marie Lundgren says:
My favourite travel memories are also stays with families in the jungles of Ecuador, mountain villages in Tanzania or with a nomadic family in the Thar Desert, where I was on my knees making chapati.
I think this concept seems fun even though we also pull together most of our trips ourselves.
27 February 2018 - 15:55
Helena says:
Wow what experiences! You never forget things like that!
27 February 2018 - 19:41
Motorhome internship says:
Mmmm I think so. There are more and more very well-travelled, well-off, young and healthy pensioners in Europe. Good idea!
27 February 2018 - 18:28
Helena says:
Of course it is! And many people want to see and experience things while travelling 🙂 .
27 February 2018 - 19:42
BP says:
I definitely believe in that idea! I have a blogger friend living in Malta who also "customises" trips to Malaysia and Borneo and has a similar collaboration with the locals.
27 February 2018 - 18:40
Helena says:
What we hear, and see in surveys and the like, many are interested in experiences, culture, food, etc. on the trip! I would like to go to Borneo! 🙂
27 February 2018 - 19:45
Susjos says:
Interesting indeed!
We ourselves are lazy and like to take a charter trip ... do not know if it is my hysterical job that makes me want to enjoy and have it easy on my holiday, haha!!! But something I would like to do is to cycle in Italy between the vineyards in the autumn! 🙂
28 February 2018 - 0:19
Helena says:
Cycling in Italy sounds like a great idea!
28 February 2018 - 12:12
Lena - good for the soul says:
How cool! It sounds like a great idea! Always fun to get to those special places.
Hug Lena
01 March 2018 - 6:04