Planet Italia, is the single most authoritative resource for discerning Italy-bound independent travelers.
Planet Italia provides fee-based, personalized travel planning to individuals looking for an experience far beyond the traditional tourist holiday.

Planet Italia is based in Houston, with an office in Genova, Italy. We devote months of each year to meticulous research. No other organization can offer a continually updated private archive of personalized Italy travel information.

Planet Italia keeps up to date on the Italian scene—restaurants and hotels fall in and out of favor; museums shut unexpectedly or modify opening hours; scaffolding comes up and down. Our recommendations are selected with critical discrimination, then double and triple checked.

After completing our travel planning survey and submitting the initial consultation fee, you will receive three to six pages of personalized travel suggestions, including an outline for a suggested itinerary and a detailed proposal for our comprehensive services. We listen carefully and unhurriedly to your concerns and interests. Each custom Travel Plan is developed around your budget and expectations.

Overview.
Our services are comprehensive, unique and truly an insider's approach to your travels in Italy. We have personally researched every recommended hotel, country inn, road, café, and gelateria. We know which hotel room has the best view and quiet nights. We share with you insider secrets and local knowledge.

The approach of our Travel Planning services is to assess your interests and travel ambitions first, then overlay our insider knowledge to ensure the most special Italian experience possible. We apply this to all of our services: villa rentals, art tours, food and wine experiences, honeymoons.

Trip Planning.
An Planet Italia planned trip is an experience a traveler would find it difficult to organize independently. Even the traveler with unlimited time and planning resources would not be able to replicate what we offer. We answer important questions: What makes a good first trip? What would you suggest for my sixth visit to Italy? What do you recommend for a family trip or for a honeymoon? How much of Tuscany can I explore in a week?

All three of our services offer a wealth of detail, experience and knowledge. Central to all three of them is our Accommodation Planning service, which begins by working with you to select and order bases, then determines the length of stay at each and finally makes your accommodation plans for you. We maintain personal liaisons with smaller owner and family-run hotels, country inns, and wine or olive-oil estates.

Most of these are owner-managed, and nearly all are at least a four-star standard, with a small number of unusual three-stars. We return often to each to ensure that they continue to meet our criteria.
Accommodations are selected for their charm, helpful staff, comfort and value. Hotel locations are consistently excellent. We generally book accommodations by room number, a service that our clients have come to expect.

We provide three categories of services:
1. Accommodation Planning.
2. Silver Travel Planning.
3. Gold Travel Planning.

Accommodation Planning Service.
This service is ideal for travelers who wish only the service for which we made our name, for last minute travelers and for those who wish to coordinate their own itinerary, touring and dining plans.

This Plan includes full reviews of accommodations, including locations, and provides general information on routing from one hotel to the next, including driving or train access.

Our Accommodation Planning Service is charged at our minimum fee of USD130.00 (more for trips longer than two weeks or exceeding four bases.)

Silver Travel Planning.
This Plan includes:
Accommodation Planning Services.

Our Good Eating materials. For some travelers, the fee for this plan is worth it alone for our Good Eating materials: in-depth information on locally-acclaimed gastronomic secrets comprising restaurants and trattorie selected from our own up-to-date research. Regional eating guides are provided for every area visited.

Excellent Maps.

Outlines for every base. For each base we include several pages of insight, unusual background information, and opinionated Planet Italia's suggestions on how to appreciate each location most fully. We do not plan your travels fully, nor do we plan each day, but we provide you with a unique point of departure for your own adventures.

Transportation Planning. We provide more specific door-to-door routing suggestions for each of your bases, including the Planet Italia's Guide to the Italian Train and the Planet Italia's Guide to Driving in Italy.
We coordinate auto rentals and our superb local drivers— including for arrival and departure transfers as well as between destinations.

Private guides For Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples and a number of other destinations we book our special guides and art historians, legendary among Planet Italia's clients; we will send you their programs (tour fees are separate). We also work with specialized guides in several locations, such as for private walking and bicycling tours in Chianti.
Cooking and wine classes are also readily arranged.

And More. You will have our imaginative guides to Italian Art History, Tax-Free Shopping, Economizing in Italy and many others, including our reading and film lists relevant to your itinerary.

For two weeks and no more than four bases, the price on this service is USD250.00.
This Plan is sent as a printed portfolio.

Gold Travel Planning.
This is a Complete Travel Planning and is priced to order.
This service is the top of the classification. We attempt to satisfy any request, and will quote a fee, whatever the group size or trip length. For a two-week trip, this Plan begins at USD400.00.
Gold Travel Planning includes complete menu planning for Transportation, Accommodations, and Good Eating, plus Itinerary Planning.
We provide authoritative, in-depth and unique daily itineraries providing insight, unusual background information, a detailed sightseeing report, and original tips on how to appreciate each location most fully.
This Plan is sent as a printed portfolio.

Villas and Appartments.
We recommend a small number of hand-selected villas and apartment rentals. Most clients prefer to select our comprehensive services to assure a truly Planet Italia’s view of Italy, but for those who need help exclusively in securing a villa rental, there is no fee.

Unlike most villa rental agencies, we recommend only villas and apartments in which we have stayed ourselves or have meticulously examined. We return often to our recommended villas and apartments to ensure that they still provide the Planet Italia’s standard.

Special services are a strong point in all our rentals, with English-speaking owners or managers, and excellent housekeepers and cooks.

Art Tours.
Private half-day tours with our Florence and Rome art historians are often called a highlight of our clients’ trips. We highly recommend the guides for stimulating, in-depth touring on a variety of topics, including history, art history, architecture, and even garden history. For children, our art historians can bring history alive in an extraordinary way. Tours are conducted both by foot and by car. You’ll find our guides’ programs included with your plans.

Our cordial drivers are reliable and professional, and provide private transfers to and from the airport, as well as touring services in perfectly maintained vehicles.

Food and Wine.
Each of our unique Travel Plans is a celebration of Italian food and wine. We share our inside-out knowledge of cuisine in every one of Italy’s 20 regions. Clients have access to our private archive of detailed information on restaurants, markets, food stores, wine shops, coffee bars, ice cream shops, pastry shops, cheese stores, bakeries, and so on.

Planet Italia’s travelers discover indigenous foods in each area that they visit. Half-day cooking classes in Tuscany and Campania are an option. Instructors are gifted teachers who host classes in their gardens and kitchens.

Family Reunions.
We’ve planned many family reunions, and these usually include a special villa rental. This provides home-like surroundings, ample space, the delights of a garden and pool and no domestic chores, as all of our recommendations come with housekeepers and, if you prefer not to use your kitchen, splendid cooks.

Families have taken tours, enjoyed cooking classes, visited vineyards, walked, read and relaxed in our handpicked villa favorites.

Contacting Us....
If you have a general inquiry about us or our services, please contact us at:

Alternatively:

We recommend that travelers start with our initial consultation service by completing our travel planning survey. Your survey will give us the best idea of your ideal Italian travels. If we are able to assist you, you will receive three to six pages of personalized travel suggestions, including an outline for a suggested itinerary and a detailed proposal for our comprehensive services.

Our price for your initial consultation is USD50.00. This fee will be credited toward the travel planning service you select.

If your primary interest is villa rental, we invite you to complete our travel planning survey or to contact us as shown above. We do not charge an initial consultation fee for villa rentals alone.