Travel Agent or Concierge Company? Only One Can Prevent Post-Vacation Stress

A travel agent can book a flight for you, make reservations, or arrange hotel accommodations—but a full-service concierge company can help you plan, get the most out of your vacation days, and bounce back quickly when you return.

Post-Holiday Blues. Post-Travel Depression. Post-Vacation Stress Disorder. No matter what we call it, the fact remains—too often we come home from a life-defining trip only to find that we need a vacation to recover from our vacation. In fact, in a recent study, researchers discovered that over 60% of employees feel little to no stress relief when they return to the office, which means too many of us are wasting our vacations.

What if you had someone by your side who could help you dream big and plan an unforgettable experience for your family while also avoiding undue stress before you leave and when you get back home? This is the true value of engaging our personal concierge services as you plan your vacation—and as you plan for the weeks following your vacation.

Take the Vacation. Skip the Stress.

Post-vacation stress makes sense, of course. The very traits that make vacations fun, expansive, and rewarding also make them exhausting. While on vacation we break from routine and have to be more proactive to manage logistics or care for our kids. We tend to cross time zones, get less sleep, go out more, indulge more, and spend more quality time together.

When we return home to our normal routines, tired but happy, we face the calls and meetings that have been put on hold and emails that have gone unanswered at work as well as unpacking, piles of laundry, and an empty fridge at home. The stark contrast can feel overwhelming and almost make us wish we had skipped our vacation altogether.

A dedicated, professional lifestyle manager can easily double as your family’s vacation planner, guiding you through a perfect trip and an effortless return. Here are a few examples of services our concierges can provide so that you will actually feel rested after your vacation.

Start the Countdown.

The key to hitting the ground running and relaxing from the very first moment of your vacation—or even on the plane ride or drive to the vacation—is what you do during the 72 hours before the vacation. The few days before you leave for a trip can feel overwhelming. You’re juggling 3 jobs: work demands, normal family demands, and last-minute vacation demands. Collaborating with your personal concierge a few weeks in advance, and creating a pre-vacation checklist of tasks your concierge will handle for you, can make your life feel like a vacation even before you leave. For example, your concierge could shop for your vacation needs, pack snacks or goodie bags for the trip (including surprises for your kids or spouse!), arrange pet-sitting or boarding services, make sure that you get your Bonus Miles and other perks, or anything else that eases your mind and gives you confidence that you’ve covered all your bases before you leave.  

Plan to the Tee.

Many studies show that planning and anticipating your vacation is just as much fun as taking your vacation. Sharing your plans with others, including your family and outside observers, heightens your enjoyment even more. Our experienced personal concierges will help you begin planning early, discuss your plans with you, and come up with exciting possibilities for your trip—all of which are simple ways to boost your overall enjoyment, increase the value of your vacation time, and help you avoid post-vacation stress. After all, one of the best ways to feel more relaxed when you return from vacation is to do all of the thinking and planning before you go.

Seek Out Unusual, Expansive Experiences—Keeping Balance in Mind.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, generic relaxation time doesn’t make most people feel rested once they’ve returned from vacation. Intense, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, such as climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge, taking a whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, or swimming with dolphins, provide lingering enjoyment after your vacation and genuinely increase your sense of overall well-being. At the same time, if your vacation is overly rushed or too active, you are guaranteed to be run down by the time you get home. Our professional concierges have vacation and event planning experience and understand how to achieve the perfect balance of memory-making and downtime as they plan your trip with you.     

Handle Logistics While You’re Away.

Naturally, work piling up at home and at the office is one of the biggest reasons that travelers feel post-vacation stress when they return. While we may not be able to convince your boss to reroute your workload during your trip, we can keep everything moving forward for you while you’re gone. Our team members work as both home and corporate concierges, which means they can respond to non-sensitive emails, keep your inbox clear, take phone calls, and manage your corporate calendar—and they can house-sit, pet-sit and process your mail. If a daily phone or email review of everything that’s happened will give you peace of mind while you’re enjoying your vacation, we can do that, too.

Instead of returning to a mountain of work and an urgent To-Do list, imagine coming back from your vacation to a clean house, a recently restocked refrigerator, an empty inbox—and plenty of time to enjoy and relive memories from your extraordinary vacation.

Contact Monogram Concierge for a free consultation. We would love to work with you to plan your next vacation, oversee your next big event, or handle the everyday details of your life so that you can spend more time doing the things you love.