Hiya, I'm Rachael
A luxury loving travel expert with a life long devotion to chandeliers, cashmere sweatpants and spreadsheets. You can hopefully find me on a rooftop or a beach with a stunner of a view (preferably at sunset) with a glass of wine in my hand.
My love of travel was never a revelation for me, having been fortunate enough to experience it from a young age. My penchant for the luxury side of it, however, I remember clearly. I was 14 and somehow scored a free upgrade on my annual trip to New York to see my family, my first time travelling in business class. To say I absolutely loved it is probably an understatement. Determined to find a way to start making this a more regular occurrence in my life, I have since spent years learning the point hacking game along with all the tricks for travelling in luxury for less to make my high flying aspirations a reality.
My ability to get a travel bargain extends far beyond finding deals on the lie flat seats on a plane (with me often paying less than the price of economy tickets on the same flight); I have a real weakness for a luxury (preferably boutique) hotel and finding stunning and slightly more unusual travel experiences around the world. I am now the chief planner and organiser for many of my family and friends often complex travel arrangements, as well as being to afford a much more luxurious style of travel myself than I would have otherwise.
However, there is a trade-off here, time for money. Unsurprisingly, airlines are not falling over themselves to hand out heavily discounted airline tickets; you need to spend some time learning how to get these deals. While I love my luxury, I also really appreciate value and love the feeling of snagging a bargain, particularly when it’s taken a bit of work to find!. If I can organise it in a spreadsheet somewhere, even better.
This is why Champagne on Arrival was created; not only is it a place to direct people when they have travel questions, but it is a great record for me personally. I also happen to absolutely love running a blog, a completely new skillset for me and one I haven’t always found easy, but always incredibly rewarding.
My goal is to not only inspire you to upgrade your travels, but to show you how you can do it in a more creative way so it doesn’t cost the earth.
I live in Leicestershire in the UK with my husband Danny and my beautiful cockapoo puppy, Alfie. While I am passionate about travel (Alfie has a very lovely holiday home in Somerset), unlike many other travel bloggers I am not a digital nomad and have no plans to become one. I love my home and have put a lot of work into making it one of my favourite places to be, so when I do leave it for foreign shores (or domestic ones for that matter), it has to be for somewhere better.
A year ago I walked away from my corporate, 60 hour (on a good week), career that I worked my whole life for. On paper it was perfect; I had worked my way up to management level and was responsible for operating global supply chains for some of the UK’s biggest retailers. I even got to travel around the world, a “perk” I had always dreamed of having in whatever career I chose.
I am not an impulsive person, but my realisation that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life always putting my work first was sudden, even though, if I’m being honest, was an issue in part I had caused myself. A few weeks later I handed in my notice and a few months after that I left to pursue a life with more freedom and autonomy.
Now I walk Alfie every day, work on this blog and indulge in my love of spreadsheets and organisation by offering my services as an Online Business Manager to other online entrepreneurs. Best of all, I still get to travel as much as I did, if not more, which is in part due to my many years of “training” on luxury travel deal hunting.
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