Reflections on Rebranding

For the last while, I’ve planned travel under the name Cruise Made Easy. As of today, that name is Squared Away Travel. The rest of it is the same -- same me, same attention to detail.

Here’s what changed, why I changed it, and the one thing that didn’t.

Start with the why, because the old name was doing something I didn’t notice for too long. It answered a question before anyone asked it. “Cruise Made Easy” tells you exactly one thing about me, and it tells you that one thing so clearly that it quietly closes the door on everything else. People would find out months later that I’d planned a cross-country rail trip, or a multigenerational summer up north, and the reaction was always some version of the same line: “I didn’t know you did that.” Of course they didn’t. The sign over the door only ever said cruise. A name should be a container, not a fence. Cruise Made Easy was a fence. It fenced me in to one kind of trip and fenced out everyone whose trip didn’t happen to float.

Squared Away Travel is a container. It’s roomy enough to hold everything I actually do, and it’s built around the part that doesn’t change no matter where you’re headed: the work of getting it right.

So let me tell you what I do, plainly. I match the right trip to the right person.

Straight up, I’m a cruise guy. That’s my home base and my deepest water, and I plan more cruises than anything else. But I also travel quite a lot around the central US, and I love putting together meaningful regional trips: rail, road, the kind of trip you take for a reason. Cruise first, always. The rest is real, and it’s growing.

What doesn’t change is the part you actually feel. It’s still me. I’m still the one who takes your trip personally, tells you the tradeoffs straight, and names the catch before you have to find it.

The trip is yours. The work is mine.

That was true under the old name, and it’s the whole reason for the new one. If you’re sitting on a trip you care about getting right, the way to start is a Snapshot: about two minutes, a few honest questions about who’s going and what you’re really after, and my read on it in return. It’s as close to a sales pitch as I get, which is to say it’s really just the start of a conversation.

Not ready for that? Feel free to explore below. There’s no clock on it.

Welcome to Squared Away Travel. Same hands on the wheel.