On the Blue Egg Travel website, owner Robin Merrill describes herself as a luxury travel designer who uses her travel experience to craft soulful, authentic journeys for clients.
“I think the biggest thing for me is creating experiences,” Merrill said. “I don’t just get my clients a ticket into Japan — I will find out who is doing food tours, who’s doing dinners with a geisha, who are who is doing the anime museum tours, and I bring that back to my client to decide. Then we go from there and we plan the whole thing from day one to the end of the trip.”
Merrill started Blue Egg Travel in January 2025, offering adventure travel, cruises, rail journeys, luxury travel and group trips. She said her love of travel began in childhood.
“My whole background has been in travel,” Merrill said. “I was a flight attendant in my 20s, and I traveled with my parents from age 10.”
Her parents traveled the world, often visiting off-the-beaten-path destinations and connecting with local communities.
“They traveled in the 1950s and were in places that people just never got into because they liked to connect to the locals in those places. When they went on vacation, they saw a chance to meet people on a different level.”
Merrill hopes to carry on her parents’ since of adventure with Blue Egg Trevel in a time when travel to many of the places her parents visited has become easier.
“Now you can get into those places … places you couldn’t really get into back then,” Merrill said. “They just went in the back door, and it wasn’t really a mission or anything like that I did — they were just very adventurous, kind souls.”
At Blue Egg Travel, Merrill helps clients travel without the stress of planning while creating opportunities to connect with local people, culture and traditions.
“What sets Blue Egg apart, is that I really connect with the individual with the places they are visiting,” Merrill said.
She begins with and interview to find out where her clients want to go, how much they want to spend, the size of the party they are traveling and the dates for the trip.
“I interview them first, and we talk about all that, but really I think the biggest part, for me, is creating experiences,” Merrill said.
Merrill said her experiences traveling with her parents, working as a flight attendant and working as a registered nurse, which she still does part time, taught her how to understand clients’ needs.
“That experience of working with people, working with patients and knowing what people need is huge,” Merrill said. “I know how to troubleshoot, fix it the problems and design a vacation — I fit right into this career not to mention my love for travel.
When she begins planning, she takes a deep dive the options, the hidden treasures of the areas her clients want to explore and the must-see attractions those area offers. He goal is to create a one-of-a-kind experience that meets her clients wishes. Once that is finished, she packages the vacation and presents her clients with a day-to day itinerary. She also makes sure all of the details — from securing a passport to getting the needed vaccinations and insurance and an itinerary complete with times, dates and places.
She also complies a traveler’s checklist and provides resources that will teach her clients about the places they will soon visit. She also makes sure her clients are ready for any emergency, had a list of contacts if they run into issues while traveling.
“Today travelers have a zillion decisions to make,” Merrill said. “On top of that the world is expanding, and today you can go to all these different places. It’s becoming very complex, very hard and not everybody wants to go online to book because it’s so complicated, it’s so time consuming and it can be very overwhelming.”
Merrill said her role is to make travel easier, safer and more rewarding for clients. Her website offers features, travel tips, resources, stories and a gallery from her own travels. She is also launching a newsletter, the Roost Report, that included destination highlights, local client stories, essential travel tips and the Blue Egg Travel Travel Blog. Anyone can subscribe to the Roost Report at BlueEggTravel.com by scrolling to the bottom of the home page.
“Travel advisors now have access to all that through the internet, through our partnerships around the world, so we can book for you, create the trip for you, set up all the excursions and present our clients with a, itinerary at the end — It’s like, “Here you go. Done.”
