Charmed by Spain cut itinerary build time from a day to two hours

Overview and background

Building one tailor-made itinerary used to take Raquel Ferriol a full day. She pieced each bespoke trip together by hand, pasting content from several places and writing every day’s description from scratch.

Ferriol co-founded Charmed by Spain almost twelve years ago, a Madrid boutique operator that designs entirely bespoke trips across Spain and into Portugal and France. No two itineraries are alike. The business covers regions from Andalusia and the Basque Country to Galicia, Valencia and Ribera del Duero, working exclusively at the high end of the market with travellers who want depth, not a package. Much of the work comes through travel advisors in the United Kingdom and the United States who trust Ferriol to design something their clients cannot find anywhere else.

That model puts the design work on a very small team. As one of Spain’s tailor-made tour operators, Ferriol researches the suppliers, prices the trip and produces the document her clients see. The volume of manual work was the bottleneck. Every bespoke itinerary had to be built from nothing, even when the trip was similar to one she had designed before. Producing several at once meant rebuilding the same destinations, the same suppliers, the same structure, each time.

“What was overwhelming was putting together three itineraries in a day, pasting from here and there, and writing all the descriptions for the new days, doing everything from scratch.”
Raquel Ferriol, Co-founder, Charmed by Spain

A second cost sat on top of the planning. Once Ferriol had the trip in her head, she still had to make it land for the traveller. For a boutique operator selling to luxury travellers and travel advisors, the look of the proposal is part of what they are paying for. It must be beautiful. That meant reformatting by hand every time.

“It looks great, which matters to me, because I lost a lot of time. Once I had the idea, the days and the hotels, I wasted time trying to make it enticing, to make it appealing to the traveller.”
Raquel Ferriol, Co-founder, Charmed by Spain

Building once, then reusing everything

Ferriol was candid about her own working style. She describes herself as the less organised of the two founders, the one with the ideas rather than the procedures. Boutique operators who run on instinct and expertise can find software transitions jarring. For Ferriol, this one was not.

“I didn’t have to forget what I was doing to get to the new way of putting itineraries together. I found it very intuitive. You could easily see what you should be doing to make it work.”
Raquel Ferriol, Co-founder, Charmed by Spain

Inside the platform, Ferriol now builds a trip in Tourwriter’s day-by-day itinerary builder using saved content, then adjusts what each client needs. Suppliers, excursions and descriptions go in once. The next time a client wants a similar trip, the building blocks are already there. A hiking itinerary she built recently will speed up every hiking request that follows.

Selling through travel advisors adds a commercial layer that the platform handles directly. Tourwriter tracks the commissions and mark-ups for each partnership, and itineraries can carry a partner agency’s logo so both businesses present one co-branded document to the traveller.

“With Tourwriter it’s very easy to keep track of the commissions and the mark-ups, which is great, because it’s not my forte. I also appreciate that we can co-brand the itinerary and include the logo of the other travel agency.”
Raquel Ferriol, Co-founder, Charmed by Spain

Finished trips reach travellers as polished documents, and operators can also share digital itineraries travellers can open on any device. Operators who want to see the builder in action can book a demo with the Tourwriter team.

Onboarding: planned carefully, live ahead of schedule

When Charmed by Spain decided to join Tourwriter, Ferriol was deliberate about the timing. She did not want to go live in a busy season and have the transition disrupt her clients. The plan was cautious: sign up in October 2025, spend a couple of months getting familiar with the platform, and begin building new itineraries from January 2026.

“We made a plan with Jess. I wanted to be ready to begin working on new itineraries by the beginning of January 2026, because we decided to get on board in October. But we were actually working with it in November.”
Raquel Ferriol, Co-founder, Charmed by Spain

Charmed by Spain's customer success manager at Tourwriter worked with Ferriol to structure the onboarding. The result was a smooth change to a completely new way of working for Charmed by Spain. The team was building real client itineraries two months ahead of the target date.

For a small, boutique operator, going through a smooth change process with the right support is crucial to the success of the transition. With no IT team and no room for a disrupted season the transition has to work.

Tourwriter was founded in 2004. More than twenty years of development, shaped directly by boutique tour operators, has produced a platform that understands the commercial reality of a small, specialist travel business. This includes the onboarding process. 

More itineraries, and hours given back

The clearest change is speed. A standard itinerary that once took Ferriol a full day now takes an hour and a half to two hours. Tourwriter records each travel day in about a minute and a half, which makes her one of the platform’s fastest builders.

The output shows in the numbers. In its first 200 days on Tourwriter, Charmed by Spain reached more than $1.6 million in itinerary value and over $730,000 in confirmed revenue. The travel advisors noticed the difference in the documents themselves.

“I’ve sent new itineraries to them since we began using Tourwriter, and the feedback has always been very positive. They all say the itineraries look much more beautiful and much more professional.”
Raquel Ferriol, Co-founder, Charmed by Spain

For a boutique operator whose reputation rests on the quality of every proposal, that feedback matters. The itinerary is not just a document. It is the first thing the traveller sees of the trip. When it looks beautiful without any extra time spent, the designer can focus on what only they can do: choosing the right suppliers, crafting the right sequence, knowing which restaurant to book and which to avoid.

Faster builds gave Ferriol something she had set as a goal from the start: time. She has created more itineraries and also stepped away for a few trips and industry workshops she could not attend before.

“I’ve been able to create more itineraries, and that was one of my goals. But I’ve also had time to do other things. I’ve been on some trips and a few workshops that I really didn’t have time to attend before.”
Raquel Ferriol, Co-founder, Charmed by Spain

Ferriol is now looking at growth. She hopes to add one more person to the team and wants to explore connecting Tourwriter itineraries with Axus, a tool some of her travel-agent partners already use. After almost twelve years through a pandemic and an uncertain global market, she still frames the work as giving people something to look forward to. You can read more Tourwriter customer stories or see what operators say in the Tourwriter reviews. Operators weighing a switch can book a discovery call.