Travel Counsellors Honeymoon Gift Registry

I’ve written before (here) about honeymoon gift lists, specifically Buy Our Honeymoon, which is a great option, particularly if you’ve booked your honeymoon with a travel agent that doesn’t offer a gift list, or if you’re sorting it all out independently. If you’re hoping for your guests to contribute towards your ideal trip, then you may well be considering booking through a travel agency that offers a registry service – Travel Counsellors is one such company.

Travel Counsellors offer quite a unique service in the travel industry – their agents, or “travel counsellors”, work from home across the UK (and beyond, including in Ireland, Australia and Canada), enabling you to work with someone who lives close to you in planning and booking your honeymoon. This has obvious advantages: for a start, service is a lot more personal, and you’re not going to get someone different every time you call up; they’ll understand the practicalities of travelling out to your honeymoon destination from where you live (particularly useful if you live some distance from a major international airport); tickets and other important documents can be hand delivered, so you don’t have to worry about them being lost in the post; and the agents are contactable at times suited to their clients, which, conveniently, includes weekends and evenings.

Even if you haven’t yet decided exactly where you’re going on honeymoon, your travel counsellor will help you choose the right destination, bearing in mind what you want to do, your budget, and what time of year you’ll be travelling.

I was very impressed by Travel Counsellors’ gift registry service, which I feel goes beyond what most other travel agents offer their clients. You do have to pay an additional £25 for the service to be set up, but this is, in my opinion, a minor charge that is worth paying for the service.

Once of the highlights of having your registry with Travel Counsellors is that once it’s set up, you’re given a special “keepsake box”. This is a really thoughtful, nice touch that will immediately make your honeymoon planning feel very special and exciting. The box contains cards for your guests, with details on your registry and how to contribute, and thank you cards – which definitely takes the hassle out of picking them up yourselves. Particularly touching is the “Honeymoon Keepsake Book”, a place where you can find some inspiration and record details of your trip, and with helpful information about what to pack and what you need to do before you go away. It’s a really smart box, and would make the perfect place to store any mementoes you have from your honeymoon once you return.

When it comes to guests contributing towards your honeymoon, it’s very straightforward: all they need to do is access the Travel Counsellors website as noted in the registry card, and enter your personal reference number. They can then contribute their chosen amount by credit or debit card; helpfully, guests that would rather not use the internet can contribute to your registry over the phone. You are able to view all the contributions made by your guests and see any special messages, which is great for keeping track of things (and, if you have time, making a head start on those thank you cards). It’s also very straightforward if you want to pay for some of your honeymoon yourselves, in addition to your guests’ contributions.

When I was in the process of booking our own honeymoon, I repeatedly read glowing reviews on wedding forums about Travel Counsellors, and the company has been voted Travel Agent of the Year three times (2006, 2007 & 2009) by readers of the Guardian, Observer and Guardian Unlimited – which is pretty high praise in my book.

For more information about the company, visit their website.

All photographs courtesy of Travel Counsellors.