Twenty five is not a round number chosen for effect. It is what was left after we pulled a year of messages into one file and merged the ones that were the same question wearing different clothes. Almost every message contained one of the questions about booking a trip in advance that appear below, and the rest split evenly between two subjects: what the fee is, and how long a reply takes.
Start with what booking means at this address. Birchway Point is a booking office. You send a request, a person here reads it, and we arrange the reservation with the company that operates the trip. We take no payment. We hold no card number. There is no checkout on this site and no page where a total is calculated. When it comes time to pay, you pay the operating company directly, on their paper, with their cancellation terms in front of you. Our income arrives afterward, as a commission from that company, and it does not come out of your fare.
Where the money actually goes
What does the office charge me?
Nothing. No consultation fee, no service fee, no research fee, no fee if you decide against the whole idea after four exchanges of mail. Every trip on the site is priced per person and that is the figure the operating company charges.
If you take no fee, who pays you?
The operating company does, as a commission, after the trip has happened. That is the ordinary arrangement in this business and it is worth knowing about because it explains the timing: we are paid last, which is a reasonable incentive to put you on a trip you finish glad you went.
Would I pay less booking direct?
No. The commission comes out of the operating company's margin, not added to your fare. Their published per person price is what you pay through us. If you ever find otherwise, write to casework@birchwaypoint.com with the two figures and we will explain the gap or drop the trip.
Does the commission steer what you recommend?
It can, in this business generally, so here is our rule in plain sight: where two trips fit the same request, the cheaper of the two deserves your booking unless there is a reason on paper why it does not fit. We put the reason in the mail so you can argue with it.
What is the spread on the catalog?
$1,890 to $4,450 per person. The low end is a short trip on shared ground arrangements. The high end is small numbers, long distance, and something inside it that only runs a few times a year.
What is not in the per person figure?
Airfare unless the trip says otherwise, meals outside the listed ones, entrance fees you choose on the day, tips, and anything you add after the reservation is made. Each trip page lists inclusions in full. Ask before you assume.
When is money due?
On the operating company's schedule, and it varies more than people expect. Deposits land anywhere from ten percent to a third. We tell you the schedule in writing before you commit to anything, and we tell you the refund cutoffs at the same time. See the cost of pulling out.
Do you take a deposit to hold something?
No. We cannot hold your money and we do not want the responsibility. A reservation is held by the operating company under their terms, and the deposit goes to them.
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What lead time is really buying
Why file trips by notice instead of by country?
Because notice is the thing that changes what you can have. Country tells you what a place is like. Notice tells you whether the version of it you want is still available. Four tiers, shortest first, is how the catalog reads.
What does short-notice mean here?
A few weeks out. Space exists, but you take what is open rather than what you would have picked. Dates are fixed, room types are whatever remains, and there is usually one element of the trip that is already full.
And one-season?
Three to five months out, which is the ordinary window and where most of our work sits. At this range you get real choice of departure date and room, and the price you are quoted is the price that holds.
What is most-of-a-year for?
Eight to twelve months. These are trips where one or two pieces close long before the rest: a permit, a small vessel, a lodge with nine rooms. The trip runs regardless. The piece you wanted may not be in it if you come late.
Two-winters sounds excessive.
Eighteen months and up, and it is not excessive for the handful of trips in that tier. Something in each one opens its book once a year, or caps numbers at a level that fills the day it opens. The tier exists so nobody spends a month planning something that closed last March.
Can I book a two-winters trip on eight months' notice?
Sometimes, with the shape changed. What usually survives is the destination and the season. What usually goes is the specific departure or the capped element. We will tell you which before you decide.
Does booking earlier make it cheaper?
Not reliably, and we will not pretend otherwise. Earlier buys availability and choice. Occasionally an operating company prices an early book lower, and when that happens we say so.
I have a fixed date and cannot move it.
Then say so in the first line of your message. A fixed date narrows the tier you are in and we would rather work inside the real constraint than send you three options that all miss it.
Is the tier the same as difficulty?
No. The tiers describe scheduling, nothing else. What a trip asks of you physically is described on its own page in concrete terms, and what you are up for is your call to make, not ours.
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Things this office will not do
Can I complete a booking on the site myself?
There is no mechanism for it here. Every reservation goes through a person, which is slower than a button and catches things a button does not, such as a connection that does not exist on the day you picked.
Do you handle insurance, visas or passports?
None of the three. Not sold here, not advised on here, not arranged here. Those are matters for the appropriate provider or the appropriate government office, and you should treat anything you read on a travel site about them, including ours, as no substitute.
Do you publish reviews or star ratings?
No, because on a site this size not one honest review exists that we could show you and prove. Sites our size that display them have either bought them or written them. Instead you get a person on the phone who has either sent people on the trip or has not, and will say which.
Do you run any of these trips?
Never. We do not own a vehicle, a boat, a room or a guide. Every trip is operated by an independent company and we name it to you in the mail once your request is real. It is not on the public pages.
Do you rank places by how safe they are?
We do not issue that verdict about anywhere. It is not ours to give and a paragraph on a booking site is the wrong place to receive it. Official government sources publish assessments and they are the ones to read.
Will you tell me whether I am up to a particular trip?
No. We will give you distances, elevations in feet, hours on foot, hours in a vehicle, and the number of days between rest days. What you make of those figures is between you and whoever knows your health.
Do you call people who have not asked to be called?
No cold calls, no automated calls, no list sold or rented to anyone. If your phone rings from this office it is because you asked in writing for a call, or because a reservation of yours needs a decision today.
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How a reply actually reaches you
How fast does a message get read?
The same working day. Anything sent through the form on any page of this site reaches the same queue, and requests can be sent round the clock because the form does not keep hours.
What is the difference between a reply and a quote?
A reply says a person has your message and asks whatever is missing. A written figure with the operating company's terms attached the priced answer runs two to four working days behind it, because we have to ask them and they answer on their own clock.
Can I speak to somebody rather than write?
Yes. (336) 680-4173 reaches the office, and a call is often faster for narrowing five ideas down to two. Anything involving a price or a date gets confirmed to you in writing afterward, because a number said aloud is a number half remembered.
What should be in the first message?
Rough dates or the tier you think you are in, how many people, a ceiling per person, and one sentence on what would make the trip worth taking. That is enough to come back with something specific rather than a brochure.
Do I get the same person each time?
On one request, yes. Whoever answers first keeps it through to the reservation, and their name is at the bottom of every mail so you are never writing to a general address about a specific thing.
Something on this page is wrong. Who do I tell?
casework@birchwaypoint.com, and be blunt about it. Corrections to a figure, an inclusion or a lead time get made the same week and we would rather hear it from you than from somebody who booked on it.
My trip is next week and something has changed.
Call (336) 680-4173 and say the departure date in the first sentence so it goes to the top of the pile. Then send the same thing to overland@birchwaypoint.com so there is a written record of what was said and when.
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If a question you have is not among these twenty five, it belongs in a message rather than in a search box. Send it to overland@birchwaypoint.com or use the form, and see the order the work happens in for what happens between your first message and a reservation.
None of that covered it
Then write, and a person answers before the working day ends rather than sending you round the site again. Say which tier you are weighing and roughly when you could leave; that is enough to start.