Where you stay, and the rooms within it.

What the stay is for

A place to recover after a long flight, a base from which to see a city, somewhere a family can spread out for a fortnight: each asks for something different, and the answer governs everything that follows.

Where it sits

Its distance from what you intend to do, from the airport and from noise. A beautiful hotel an hour from everything the party came for is the wrong hotel.

How the rooms fall

Connecting rooms for children, a room near the family for a nanny or an assistant, a suite that can receive guests, a ground floor for someone who would rather avoid stairs.

How private it is

Whether there is a separate entrance, how visible an arrival is, and how many other guests share the pool and the dining room.

How it receives you

Whether a late arrival is met properly, whether a room can be held from the early morning, and how the house responds to a request made at an unusual hour.

Hotels are booked directly or through licensed suppliers, in the category of room you have approved, and never a lesser one without your agreement. Each booking is confirmed to you in writing.

Preferences are sent ahead and confirmed back before you travel: the arrangement of the beds, a pillow, a cot, the temperature of the room, a dietary requirement for the kitchen. An early arrival or a late departure is requested when the room is booked, and confirmed in writing where the hotel can give it, rather than left to be asked for at the desk.

A private house suits a family that wants its own table and its own hours, or a party too large for a single floor of a hotel. Houses are arranged through licensed agents or through the owner’s managers, and the proposal says which.

Before a house is proposed, we establish what a photograph cannot show: who manages it and how they are reached, what staff it has and what they do, whether a cook can be engaged, how the arrival and the keys are handled, what is and is not included, and what the house asks of its guests. All of it is set out in writing, so that nothing is discovered on the first evening.

For a stay measured in weeks — a summer by the sea, a season in a city — the arrangements extend accordingly: a residence with room to live in rather than merely to visit, housekeeping on the pattern you prefer, a car and chauffeur for the period, and the domestic details that make a borrowed house work as your own.

The party

Adults and children, with ages, and anyone travelling with you in a working capacity.

The dates

Or the window within which they fall, and how firm it is.

The rooms

How you would like them arranged, and anything that must be avoided.

The character

A hotel or a house; somewhere lively or somewhere quiet; places you have liked, and places you have not.