Owner of Unique Travel Events | Tourism | Leisure Travel | Event Management | Incentive Travel | Adventure Travel | Travel Planer
A family of ten was somewhere between Paris and Geneva when their itinerary needed to bend. Nobody opened a laptop. They called Andrea Savitch instead. Twenty years into running Unique Travel Events, that instinct, reaching for a person instead of a platform, is the entire business distilled into one phone call.
A Name Clients Call First
Andrea Savitch is the Owner of Unique Travel Events, a Virginia-based consultancy she has built over twenty years around cruises, resort escapes, dream weekends, and complex international itineraries for families and corporate groups alike. Her clients could book any of it themselves online. They choose not to, because what she actually sells is the certainty that someone will pick up the phone when it matters.
Eighteen Years Before the First Booking
Before she planned a single trip, Andrea Savitch spent eighteen years selling something far less glamorous than a vacation: commercial printing. After studying at the State University of New York College at Potsdam, she joined Huff Printing in 1988 and rose to Vice President of Sales and Marketing, a title she held for nearly two decades in an industry built on being replaceable. Printing is a commodity. Any competitor can quote the same job for less.
What Savitch learned there had nothing to do with paper or ink. It was about what makes a client stay when a cheaper option is always one phone call away.
“Whether one’s product is gold watches or garden hoses, respecting the client is crucial,” she says. “What I have learned is that people who value service and quality quickly abandon commodities and online solutions.”
When she founded Unique Travel Events in January 2006, she was not starting over. She was carrying a lesson from a commodity business into an industry about to become one. Her sharpest tool, she says, was never a marketing budget. It was sixty seconds of conversation.
“I believe learning the art of the elevator pitch has been a key to building my referrals,” Savitch explains. “It may seem small, but getting people to listen for 60 seconds creates credibility and reveals creativity.”
Two decades of those sixty-second conversations, repeated at community events and client introductions, built a company that still runs almost entirely on word of mouth.
Ten Travelers, Three Countries, No Surprises
Today, Unique Travel Events covers cruises, resort vacations, custom tours, experience gifts, and travel incentive programs for companies rewarding their own people. Savitch backs the range with real credentials: an Accredited Cruise Counselor designation, Luxury Specialist certification, Celebrity Five Star Academy training, and Marriott Hotel Excellence recognition, the kind of continuing education most twenty-year veterans stop pursuing.
The clearest example of what that expertise produces is a trip she designed for a family of ten moving through Paris, Geneva, and London. Ten travelers means ten sets of preferences and ten times the chances for something to break. Savitch secured private apartments, arranged a dinner at the Eiffel Tower, and found what the family later called an awesome villa in Kensington, coordinating flights, lodging, and tours across three borders without a single gap. For corporate clients, the stakes are different but no smaller: a poorly run incentive trip reflects on whoever approved the budget, not just on Savitch.
“Using well-vetted, reliable vendors decreases the chance of problems, but I am available 24/7 for my clients, which is the consistent backup,” she says.
The family’s own review captured the result. “I simply shared with her our desired activities, and she scheduled everything, including flights, accommodations, and all of our tours,” they wrote. “I would absolutely recommend her to anyone planning their next trip.”
That kind of outcome does not happen by accident, and it is not something a booking engine can replicate. The pressure on that model has only grown. Online booking platforms, price-comparison tools, and now AI-generated itineraries all promise travelers a faster route to the same destination. Savitch’s answer has not changed since her printing days: chase clients who value service and quality, because the ones chasing the lowest price were never going to stay loyal anyway.
“Trust is built by listening and learning what your clients want and what their priorities are,” Savitch says. “From my perspective, service is the key. Being available and honest is critical.”
What exactly she listens for, and how she turns twenty years of instinct into a process she can repeat for every new client, is a longer story than this one.
Why They Still Call
The family calling from Europe did not need Andrea Savitch to book a hotel. They needed someone who had already thought three steps ahead of whatever might go wrong. That is what she has sold since she left the Vice President title at Huff Printing in 2006, and it is why, in an industry racing toward automation, her phone still rings first.
The algorithm can suggest the villa. It cannot tell you why it is the right one.
Andrea Savitch is the Owner of Unique Travel Events, based in Dumfries, Virginia. She designs custom travel, corporate incentive trips, and complex international itineraries for clients who want a real person, not a platform, in charge of the details. To connect with Andrea or learn more, visit www.uniquetravelevents.com or www.linkedin.com/in/uniqueevents.
