What we check before you ever see an itinerary
Most of the work happens before there is anything to show you. Here is the actual list, including the part where we walk it ourselves.
Before the deposit · September 2026
The claim we do not make
Plenty of advisors will tell you there is invisible work behind a good trip, and then leave it invisible. Here is ours, written down, because a list you can read is worth more than a promise you cannot check.
We measure the walk
Hotels say walkable. Show sites say walkable. Neither of them is walking it with a bag at 5:30 with everyone else.
Planning SHOT Show 2027, we went through nine hotels and worked out the route from each one to the Venetian Expo floor. One property described the walk as fifteen minutes. It is twenty-seven to thirty-three, depending on which door you come out of and whether the casino floor is busy. That hotel is still on our list. It is just on it with the real number next to it, so nobody books it thinking it is across the street.
That is the whole method: keep the place, correct the claim.
We read the cancellation terms and write them out
Not “fully refundable.” The date, the local time, and what happens on each side of it. For the January rooms this year that meant: refundable until 4:58 PM on the 16th, one night charged if you cancel between then and 4:59 PM on the 18th. In writing, before anyone holds a card.
We check the show’s own schedule, not last year’s
Organisers change hours and dark nights between editions, and half the pages you find in a search are for the previous year. We pull dates, floor hours and housing providers from the organiser’s own site, note the day we checked, and check again before flights are bought.
While doing that for 2027 we found two shows on the same four days and two more overlapping by three. That is not a detail you want to discover after somebody books.
We time dinner against the floor, not against the restaurant
If the floor closes at 5:30, a seven o’clock table means a sprint through a casino in the clothes you stood in all day. We book at 7:30 or later on show days, and we tell you which nights are hard before anyone gets their hopes up. When a city has a home game and a stadium show on the same night, that is the night we move the dinner that matters.
We plan for the people who are not badged
Somebody always comes along. If nobody plans their day, they spend three days waiting in a hotel room from 8:30 to 5:30, and you hear about it. So they get their own plan, timed so everyone meets for dinner.
We say when you should not book with us
If your company block, or your card’s travel programme, beats what we can do on your dates, we will tell you and you should take it. The driver, the tables and the rest of the week work either way. We would rather lose a booking than argue you into a worse room.
Then you see an itinerary
Everything above happens first. What lands in your inbox is the short version: two or three hotels, the real walk from each, the terms, and a plan for the week. Every confirmation ends up in one place your whole team can open, and when something moves, it moves there instead of in a group text.
Send the dates and the headcount and we will start at the top of this list.
Notched Travel Co.