Every group trip has one: the person who ends up doing all of it. The spreadsheet. The forty-message text thread. The chasing of deposits, the "did everyone book their flight?", the aunt who needs a ground-floor room and the cousin who books last. By the time the trip arrives, the person who dreamed it up is too tired to enjoy it.

Unless that person is me. Then it's just my job — and I happen to love it.

I'm a group travel planner, and I take celebrations of every shape: multi-generational family reunions where the ages run from two to eighty-two, milestone birthday villas in Tuscany, girls' trips built around a river cruise or an Irish manor house, destination weddings, anniversary gatherings, guys' golf weeks, retreats. Groups are where travel does its best work — a week together somewhere beautiful creates the stories a family tells for twenty years — and they are also, frankly, where planning gets hardest. Different budgets, different mobilities, different ideas of fun, one shared trip.

Here's how I make it easy. I do the diplomacy up front: a conversation with the organizer (and the group, if useful) to shape a trip that fits everyone — including the honest talk about budget ranges before anyone falls in love with the wrong villa. I negotiate the group itself: blocks of rooms or cabins held under one umbrella, group amenities and perks through my industry partnerships, and space contracts that protect you. Then I take over the part nobody wants: individual payments handled separately so no one fronts money for anyone else, rooming lists, dietary notes, the ground-floor room for the aunt, transfers timed to a dozen different flights, and a plan built with free hours in it — because the secret of great group travel is together for the golden moments, apart for the rest.

The magic of the group format is that everyone gets my full advisor treatment — the perks, the vetted hotels, the human to call if a flight cancels — while only one person had to send me a message. And the celebrations compound: the fortieth-birthday group becomes the fiftieth; the destination wedding becomes the babymoon; the family reunion becomes a tradition.

So gather your people. Pick the occasion — or let the occasion be simply that you like each other and life is short. I'll do the rest, spreadsheet and all.