Adwoa M.
Founded Emba in 2014. Specialises in long-form bespoke trips, particularly Italy, Japan, and East Africa. Reads on planes, never sleeps on them.
01 — The story
Started in 2014 because booking a trip had become awful.
Twelve years in
In 2014 the founder of Emba was trying to plan a three-week honeymoon and couldn't find a single agency that would do anything other than email her PDFs of resort packages. She built the trip herself, regretted four of the bookings, and came back convinced there was a different way to do this. Twelve years later, Emba is what she wishes had existed then: a studio of nine travel designers who treat every trip as a writing project before it becomes a logistics one.
We are intentionally small. Nine designers means one of them is on your file from first conversation through landing back — not a "client services manager", not a chatbot. We do not take commission from hotels (it would compromise which one we recommend). We do not run sales. We do not have a marketing budget. Roughly 70% of our work comes from clients who have travelled with us before. The other 30% from one of them telling someone else.
What we believe — that the best trips are written, not assembled. That a quiet hotel in the right neighbourhood beats a famous hotel in the wrong one. That a designer who has actually slept in the bed knows things a brochure never will. That nobody on holiday should be solving problems at 2am. That £8,000 spent on the right ten days will outlast £8,000 spent on the wrong fourteen.
