The process
The same person who plans your trip is the one who looks after it.
It begins with five minutes — our travel profile, or a note on WhatsApp. Who is coming, roughly when, and what a good day away feels like to you. No forty-field forms, no obligation. Just enough for us to understand you, and to know whether we are the right people for the trip you have in mind.
Within two hours, a trip designer reads your brief — a real person, not a queue. The one assigned to you has walked the lanes they are sending you down, eaten at the counter they will book for you, and knows which room at which hotel is worth asking for. You will have their name before you have an itinerary.
What arrives is a considered journey, written as prose rather than a menu to assemble yourself. You will have opinions — you should. We expect you to push back, and we refine until the shape of it feels unmistakably like yours. Nothing is confirmed until it is.
The designer who planned your trip is the one who answers when a flight moves at midnight, or the children decide they would rather see the temple after all. One person, beginning to end. No handovers, no call centre, no starting your story again with a stranger.
Always private
Signature journeys — most of the catalog — run privately, by default. You will not share a vehicle, a guide, or a dinner table with people you did not choose, and the dates are yours to set. The exception is our Curated departures — a small number of trips run as a small, capped group a handful of times a year, always clearly marked.
And if a trip you have seen is almost right but not quite — a week longer, an anniversary in the middle, the grandparents joining in Kyoto — there is a single line on every page: Make this private. It is not a separate, costlier product. It is simply how Cimara works.
Two ways to travel
One standard of care, two ways to book. The difference is in how the trip comes together — made-to-order around you, or a small, fixed-date group we run ourselves — never in how closely you are looked after.
Designed around your group from scratch — your dates, your pace, refined until it is unmistakably yours. This is the default, and most of the catalog.
A small number of itineraries we run ourselves, a handful of times a year — a small group of Cimara guests only, never merged with another operator's travellers.
What it costs
You will never see “starting from”. The price we show is the price you pay — flights handled, the stays, private guiding, transfers, the dinners worth planning around, and the help when something changes. We would rather quote honestly once than surprise you later. There are no membership fees, and nothing to join.
The people
Cimara is deliberately small. A handful of designers, each with parts of the world they know in their bones — Japan, East Africa, the Nordics, Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean. You are matched to the one who knows your destination best, and you stay with them. We would rather design fewer trips beautifully than many trips adequately.
Before you ask
No — and we are particular about that. We do not sell fixed itineraries off a shelf. Every journey is designed around the people travelling and run privately for them alone.
Mostly no. Signature trips — most of the catalog — are private by default: your group, your dates, no one else. The exception is our Curated departures: a small number of small-group trips, capped at twelve and run on set dates a handful of times a year, always clearly marked as such and never merged with another operator's travellers.
For most destinations, eight to twelve weeks is comfortable. Japan in cherry-blossom season, Kenya during the Migration, and the Aurora months fill earlier — the sooner we begin, the better the rooms.
Yes. The catalog is where most people start, not the limit of what we do. Tell us what you have in mind and we will build it around you.
We arrange the whole thing — international flights, visa guidance, on-ground transfers, and travel insurance — so there is one plan and one point of contact, not five tabs open at midnight.
None. Nothing to subscribe to, and nothing to pay before you travel beyond the trip itself. You begin with a conversation.
Start planning
Five minutes is all it takes to begin. We’ll do the rest.