By why each more and most more people wants travel without planning anything

Seventeen tabs open on a Sunday afternoon, three comparison sites giving three different prices for the same plane, and that weird feeling of working on something you were supposed to be excited about. If it sounds familiar, it's not you.

There's a phrase I hear more and more often, and almost always with the same words:

"I want to travel. But I don't want to organize absolutely anything."

And I understand.

Because travel should begin long before boarding a plane. But not necessarily in front of a spreadsheet.

• Or comparing 38 hotels.
• Or trying to work out whether the 7:42 train makes sense with the 11:15 flight.
• Or reading 94 reviews to decide where to have dinner on Tuesday.
• Or joining a Facebook group to ask whether it is worth sleeping one night or two in that place.

Sometimes, what's needed isn't more information, or more stress than we already have in our daily lives.

Someone needs to take care of it.

And that's where we come in.

But before we go on, it's worth mentioning one thing. Because there's a phenomenon with a name and scientific literature behind it, and it explains quite well why more and more people are reaching this point.

In 2000, Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a tasting booth in a California supermarket. Some days they offered six varieties of jam. Others, twenty-four. The big stall attracted more people. But when it came to buying, the table of six sold about ten times more than the twenty-four one.

This year, a team of researchers—An, Ozturk, Hancer, Hua, and Berezina—published a study that gets straight to the point: how the abundance of information in online travel agencies generates consumer confusion and, as a consequence, postponement of the reservation decision.

The result of having too many options is usually not a worse trip, but no trip at all. Closing the tabs, saying "I'll look at it next week" and then never looking at it. That's where this crosses over with the "someday" syndrome: the brain postpones, and every postponement feels reasonable.

There's a more radical version of that same idea, and we've been mulling it over for months: taking the destination decision out of the equation. We tell it in what if you didn't know where you were going until you got to the airport?

The following data is from the UK and the US. There is no equivalent Spanish study, so consider it a trend in the Western market, not an exact reflection of what is happening here.

Many people understand travel without planning anything differently: buy a one-way ticket, book the first night and see what happens. It is a legitimate way to travel and there are people who come back delighted. But it is worth being precise about what it does and what it does not do.

There's a beautiful contradiction in traveling without organizing anything.

Because traveling freely, getting everywhere and not having to worry about schedules, reservations or travel involves a lot of work behind the scenes.

Spontaneity doesn't mean there's no plan. It means you don't have to be constantly thinking about it.

And that job has a problem: You only notice it when it fails.

• You don't see the call to check that the accommodation is still operating as it did last year.
• You don't see the calculation of the real time between two points, which is almost never the one on the map.
• You don't see tickets bought in advance because they sell out during the season.
• You don't see the local contact to call if someone gets sick.
• You don't see the alternative plan for the rainy day.
• You don't see why after five intense days there is an afternoon with nothing planned.

If you enjoy spending three months organizing a trip, making spreadsheets and comparing hotels until two in the morning…

You'll probably have more fun doing it yourself.

But if you have been thinking for a while: "I am dying to travel, but I have neither the time nor the energy to organize it."

• If you want adventure, but also a good night's sleep.
• If you want to meet people, but not be part of a 40-person excursion.
• If you want to discover a real place, but don't want to deal with all the logistics.
• If you want to travel alone, but not feel lonely.
• If you want to be able to improvise without improvisation becoming a problem.
• If you want to arrive at the airport and think: "from here on, I let myself go".

Then maybe you're one of us. And if none of the departures this year fits your dates, there is the option to put one together for you or simply write to us and ask.