How to Plan a Trip to be Memorable from Beginning to End

Have you ever heard the old adage ‘all is well that ends well’?

A series of experiments carried out by a very nice man named Daniel Kahneman shows that our brain is not really that keen on the saying. It’s just something for the brain to make use of when it comes to generating memories.

Drawing on the results of their experiments, Kahneman and his colleague Donald A. Redelmeier formulated their so-called ‘peak-end’ rule.

When we remember events from the past, our brain takes a shortcut and only considers the intensely positive or negative episodes (the ‘peaks’) and the final moments (the ‘end’) of that experience, in order to decide how good or bad the whole event was.

 For this and other brilliant theories, and despite being, by training, a Psychologist, Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002.

I am going to tell you two stories that will help you understand how the cognitive bias described by this rule operates on our memories.

A ‘Nearly’ Perfect Honeymoon

A few years ago I organised Germán and Laura’s honeymoon.

It was the second marriage for both of them, but they were more excited —if that’s even possible— than on their first honeymoon.

It was one of those perfect trips. Everything turned out even better than expected.

The hotels, all of them 5-stars, had been warned, and in each of them had prepared a special surprise for the couple: a bottle of wine, flowers, a spa session… The key was to not have the same gift offered twice.

Germán and I had secretly organised an Indian wedding, which had been Laura’s dream. They sent me the fairytale pictures of the event the day after.

I happened to be in Delhi at the time of their visit and was able to meet them for lunch. They could not have been any happier.

Two days later, they flew back to Argentina.

A week later, I called Germán.

‘Don’t even ask me about our trip!’, he said, in a clearly angry voice.

‘B-but, what’s wrong?’, I stammered, astonished. ‘In Delhi you told me you were having a fabulous trip.’

‘We had a huge fight in the plane on our journey back home and, once here, we decided to break up. This has been, without a doubt, the worst trip of my life.’

I found his reaction understandable: the memories were still raw.

A few years later, I talked to Germán again and, again, he referred to the trip as having been the worst of his life.

What had happened to the memories of the Indian wedding, the amazing hotels, and everything else? It was as if those things had never happened.

When the Unexpected Happens

Elena had been dreaming of travelling to India for years.

Fernando, her husband, wasn’t keen on the idea at all, but Elena teamed up with their three children and the majority asserted itself: that summer, they would all go on a trip to discover India together.

When they landed at Delhi’s airport, Fernando’s suitcase was nowhere to be seen. The airline had misplaced it, and they were told it would be arriving the next day. In the end, it took three days for them to get it back.

Summer is the rainy season in the North of India, but no one remembered a monsoon as strong as the one that year.

Many roads became flooded, and three-hour-long journeys by car became six-hour-long drives. There was no choice but to cancel the visits to some of the monuments.

We called their hotel in Jaipur and asked them to organise a private cooking lesson for them and offer the girls to decorate their hands with an Indian design called mehndi, which is done with henna, a natural dye.

In Varanasi, all boat trips had been cancelled due to the river’s flooding. While walking along the steps (ghats) that lead down to the Ganges, the guide ran into his two sons and some of their friends, who were about the same age as Elena’s children. They decided to carry on their visit to the Holy City together.

Upon their return to the hotel, they were greeted with a cake for the youngest of the siblings, who would celebrate his birthday two days after their return to Spain. At that age, you are allowed to have two birthday parties, or even more.

The last night before their return flight, they were surprised with a room of higher quality than what had originally been arranged for.

When I called them a week after their return, they were talking over each other in their eagerness to let me know that they could still see the henna patterns on their hands, that they had already bought the spices to prepare one of the recipes they had learned, and that they still kept in touch with their friends from Varanasi via Skype.

Elena and Fernando agreed that Varanasi had been the best part of the trip. Witnessing how their children shared experiences with other kids whose lives were so different to their own, and how attentively they listened, and the thousand questions everyone asked was a singular moment.

The family agreed that it had been the best trip of their lives. Fernando was the one most touched by the whole experience.

How to Apply the Peak-End Rule to Plan Best Guest Journey

1) Find out what are the details that can make a difference to your clients. They might be different things for each traveller in the group. Sometimes, a story that your client tells you about a former trip can provide more information about their preferences than any information they might give you as an answer to a direct question.

2) Setbacks can happen in any trip and not all of them are preventable. When they happen, agencies try to find a way to compensate for any inconveniences the client may have experienced. With some empathy, we will realise there are things we can do and that these don’t always cost money.

I believe it is in his book Building Great Customer Experiences where Colin Shaw cites the example of a telephone company’s customer service centre. When a customer called to report the theft of their phone, they would immediately cancel their SIM so that no one could use it and ask them if they needed them to call the police or an ambulance. They would then send an email to the customer with the 10 numbers they called more often. Nowadays, it’s rare to find someone who learns phone numbers by heart or writes them down in their diary.

3) Have you heard the saying ‘the devil’s in the detail’? Many years ago a beautiful hotel called Las Nubes opened in the Spanish province of Guadalajara. Its location is an idyllic landscape and the rooms are absolutely gorgeous. We had lots of fun. When we get together, however, what we always remember are its marvellous handcrafted air fresheners. In all the rooms, there was a candle that released the fragrance of some natural lavender oil. On our last day, a small flask of that oil, with the instructions to use it at home, was offered to each of us as a gift. Nowadays, those flasks are easily found in many places, but twenty years ago they were something really special.

4) Pay attention to the moments of the trip that lend themselves to offering the client a peak moment. Be mindful of including them when planning the itinerary or suggest them before the start of the trip. The choice will vary depending on the characteristics of the itinerary, the travellers’ preferences and, above all, on our having paid attention to the things our client told us while we were organising their trip. A trip in a hot-air balloon, a consultation with an astrologer, a yoga lesson at a special location, a romantic boat trip with a bottle of champagne, bathing with elephants, or sharing a campfire with the members of a tribe. The key is to create a Wow moment.

5) We have already seen that all our efforts to make sure that our client enjoys their trip can be ruined by a disastrous last day. This is why it is so important to plan the end of the trip with great care. Try to book the best hotel, or at least one of the best, for the last night. It is preferable to economise on the first night than on the last ones. You might even be able to arrange for a special surprise at the last destination, so as to be the cherry on top of the cake.

6) For the client, their trip doesn’t come to an end as soon as they find themselves back at home. And for the team at the travel agency, it shouldn’t either. Even the worst trip can be improved if we call our client once they have returned and allow them to tell us about their experience.

In the case of Germán and Laura, no one could have guessed what was about to happen. Sometimes there is nothing we can do to change the way a trip ends. It’s just not in our hands.

Otherwise, the principle that Daniel Kahneman discovered and articulated in his peak-end rule is certainly a valuable tool to help us bring about more perfect trips and indelible memories.

If you are interested in this topic, here is some very interesting further reading:

Think fast, think slow. Daniel Kahneman.

Building great customer experiences. Colin Shaw and John Ivens.

And don’t miss Daniel Kahneman’s TED talk.

Acknowledgement for images:

1) Alfredo Miguel Romero from Pixabay. 2) Gaurav Kumar from Pixabay. 3) Khalid Hamid from Pixabay. 4) Nico. 5) Stephen Leonardi from Unsplash

Special thanks to Irene Riaño for her magnificent translation into English.