Avant-Garde Travel - San Diego, California

Marissa A.

Jennifer was attentive, creative, and fully available throughout the planning of our girls’ trip to Milan. As a mother taking three daughters overseas, I naturally felt some anxiety—but Jennifer’s support helped ease my nerves every step of the way.

I wanted to make sure each of my daughters felt seen and accommodated, and Jennifer truly honored that intention. Thanks to her professionalism, care, and warm personality, the girls will forever remember our magical time in Milan.

We’re so grateful to Jennifer—and we can’t wait for her to plan our next adventure!

DeSaix S.

Miraval was a truly amazing experience, everything I had hoped for and more. Jennifer and the team at Avant-Garde Travel made everything a breeze and what a great group of women!

Adam D.

Five full stars. We love love love our travel agent Aimee! Aimee has helped us plan multiple trips now that range from full-service where every last detail is thought of and planned to less managed trips where you just need hotels and a few tours and book everything else on your own and she shines in every way.

On our full-service trips to Scandinavia and Japan, she took care of every detail from when we got off the plane with a private driver taking you to our first hotel, dinner reservations, private sushi classes, food tours, cultural heritage site tours, transfers between cities and hotels, to when we left our last hotel and go home (in style of course!). We have been privileged to have unique experiences such as riding a bike through Copenhagen with a private chef with a kitchen-bike, to learning how to make sushi with a sushi chef, to private city tours of Stockholm, Kayaking in the Lulea River in Sweden, taking a rigid inflatable speedboat to a Fjord in the Norwegian arctic circle, and touring the most beautiful temples and shrines of Japan with a private guide who can share details and educate you on the history and the culture that you could not find on your own.

Travel agents make money when they book you things, but Aimee is never pushy with booking something every single day, and gives you time to decompress and discover on your own if you so choose. (If you want to do something planned every day you definitely can!)

While our experiences are not the cheapest (The Four Seasons is always so expensive!) , our vacation time is limited, and we appreciate how we get a full experience of a city / country / culture and make the best use of that one resource that none of us have unlimited amounts of -- time. We also feel like even though the expense is high that we are getting decent value for our hard-earned money. We were with a different travel agency previously who we felt like did not provide as much value for our money and are happy we switched to Avant Garde.

When a snag happens on a trip, like the plane delay that got us to Copenhagen 3.5 hours late last summer, Aimee or someone on her team from SD or Denmark jump into action and make sure that we reconnect with the trip and get back on track as soon as possible. We have declined some of her choices for hotels and had her book a hotel that we heard about or read about, and she has never given us any trouble or made us feel like she was pushing us to have to stay at any property that was more advantageous for her business. Her focus is to design a trip that YOU want to take, and we really, really feel like she is in our best interest all of the time.

We've also booked less-managed trips with Aimee, where she helps us with hotels and maybe a couple of things in cities we understand and know. A memorable trip we took last year was when we went to Paris and Madrid to see Taylor Swift. We didn't want or need (or necessarily have the budget for) a full-service trip with action-packed private tours but she was happy to book our hotels, provide recommendations on what to do, and let us book other things on our own.

From what I understand, Aimee has a team of professionals that work with her who help coordinate and plan and cater to many price points, but she specifically specializes in high-end travel with unique experiences. I love the fact that she always does a post-trip call (our previous high-end travel agent didn't do this) and wants to know what we loved (almost everything) and what can be improved (a few things) and feel like she really cares about your experience and uses the feedback to help us plan our next fabulous vacation and to avoid pitfalls that prior clients maybe have experienced.

We are already dreaming of our next trip (with Aimee's help, of course!) and would highly recommend her for anybody who wants a customized, high-end experience (with prices to match!) that provide a good value for money spent.

Senna O.

I used Avant-Garde Travel to book a luxurious trip to Miraval Arizona. It was a seamless and wonderful experience from booking to checkout. Aimee was professional, efficient and frankly, quite charming - an absolute pleasure to work with. I had a couple of issues with flight and spa booking changes that Aimee helped me work out before I arrived as well as on-site at the resort. The value received for both the resort stay ( resort credit bonus!) and the excellent communication and customer service provided by Avant Garde were well worth the cost. I have no doubt I will be traveling with Aimee again and highly recommend her to anyone who is looking for a stress-free and unforgettable getaway.

Sara M.

Our recent experience with Aimee Leon and Avant-Garde Travel was simply exceptional in every way. Aimee listens and gathers the essence of the trip you envision and then delivers a fantastic itinerary. Her deep expertise in all aspects of international travel becomes obvious immediately and she navigates any hurdles with skill. She shows significant insight for all things ‘travel’. The detailed, interactive web-based itinerary was invaluable throughout the trip.

We wanted to build a bucket-list trip to the Arctic Circle to view the Northern Lights across Norway and Iceland. Our local travel agent utterly failed to in her attempt to help us plan this trip. We reached out to Avant-Garde after finding them on a web search and Aimee contacted us quickly. Within hours we knew we were in the right hands and well on our way to an unforgettable adventure. Aimee put together a first-rate itinerary of accommodations and activities. I'm super picky about travel -- suggestions she made along the way were excellent.

Unfortunately, the very first leg of our outbound flight failed causing us to miss the infrequent connection to the Arctic Circle in Norway. When I contacted the emergency number Aimee and her assistant were already aware and working on alternatives. I fed her suggestions to the Delta gate agent who arranged to quickly rebook us on another carrier that would allow us to arrive in Norway - a bit worse for wear - within hours of our original schedule. Having a safety net like this to deal with the inevitable issues that accompany travel is priceless.

When we begin to design our next adventure, we will absolutely put the details in the competent hands of Aimee Leon and Avant-Garde Travel.

DonLynne U.

Sherry Hall has been amazing - so helpful and patient with us! We really didn't know what we wanted to do and she asked insightful questions, got us so much information and had sooooo much personal travel knowledge! We can't wait to go on another cruise with Avant Garde and Sherry helping us plan!

Moonlight M. N. (. M.

Elizabeth McEachron is a 10 Star travel agent. She took detailed notes and found exceptional deals for a 10 day cruise in Greece, followed by an 8 day land tour of Italy. Highly customized and reasonable price. What a timesaver and well worth it to have such an organized, energetic , fun travel agent who thrives on giving you the best experience! She even hit our budget mark and we have some fantastic land tours planned. Thank you 🙏 and I will count the stars while on deck.

KellyAnn O.

If you're looking for an amazing, unique, thoughtfully planned, and memorable trip experience you've found the right agency with Avant-Garde Travel. My girlfriend and I hired Aimee / Avant-Garde to plan our Iceland trip and every detail was nailed and planned beyond my expectation! Aimee took the time prior to our trip to really understand our desires as a couple and our individual wish list. Once all information was gathered, the trip presented to us was exactly what we were seeking. The hotels were amazing, the locations were perfect, the logistics were perfectly timed to allow some leisure time as well, we were properly informed, we were supported while in Iceland, and they kept us constantly updated regarding Covid guidelines and / or changes that impacted how we traveled. In my line of work I'm a confident planner and I had never felt the need to hire a travel agency for my personal use, however we wanted a different type of experience and one that was a bit more guaranteed given the current pandemic environment and I'm beyond grateful that we used Avant-Garde as it provided details, knowledge, and adventures that I couldn't have done so on my own. A huge thanks to Aimee Leon and Avant-Garde Travel... you are amazing, a class-act operation, your care is highly noticed from the start to the return, and I look forward to working with you again in the future.
Kelly and Jessica