Natalie Dent – Your Independent Travel Agent Based in Edinburgh
Travel Makes Life Feel Rich
Meet Your Travel Agent, Natalie Dent
Being well-travelled has given me a profound sense of openness and curiosity. I’m interested not only in what new destinations are and how they came to be, but in how they feel to experience. I want to know why a destination matters to the people who visit and protect it.
When we embrace the purpose behind travel, we unleash the power of travel as an unlimited force for good.
Why do people choose to travel?
Travel Makes Life Feel Rich
An Impulsive Decision To Travel
Transformed My World
In 2008, I was bobbing around when I made a snap decision to apply for a job on the cruise ships. Three weeks later, I was sailing the Adriatic in a floating hotel, working in close quarters with 900 crew from all over the world, and delivering top class service to over 2,000 travelling guests.
By the time I left ships, I had visited most of the world’s coastline. I spent three full seasons in Alaska, three in the Caribbean, two in the Mediterranean, one in Norway, and one in Asia. I crossed the Atlantic three times, the Pacific Ocean twice and the Panama Canal a whopping 37 times. I once sailed from Cape Town to the North Cape in a single voyage.
After 1,362 days at sea, I returned to land and brought my global travel expertise back home. Today, as an independent travel agent based in Edinburgh, I help clients across Scotland and the UK to make travel and travelling well a meaningful part of their own life stories.
How I Approach
Experiential Travel Planning
Travel is a deeply personal experience. Since coming back to land, I’ve worked extensively as a luxury travel designer and hotel guest experience manager, and have also sampled a huge variety of premium travel products first-hand. This has made me ultra-sensitive to the tiny details that separate a standard trip from a true bucket-list holiday.
Designing luxury and experiential travel is never about the price, the location, or the star rating. It's about finding the exact feeling you want to create and matching that to the overall experience that best delivers it, even if that means sending you somewhere else, or giving you something you didn't expect.
When creating a personalised travel itinerary for you, my goal is to immerse you in your destination without feeling like everything is just a box tick. Considered travel is about creating a deep sense of place, and giving you the freedom and flexibility to choose your own comfort zone.
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Why Partner With
Barrhead Travel Group
Brilliant Travel is the independent homeworking division of Barrhead Travel Group. I'm part of a group of around 38 self-employed travel agents who use Barrhead's booking systems, product contracts, and industry licences to plan and book travel for clients who prefer a closer, more personalised travel planning experience.
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Established in 1975, Barrhead Travel brings over 50 years of industry trust and prestige. This relationship gives me direct access to an extensive global network of sought-after suppliers and a quality team of well-travelled colleagues, ensuring you receive unbeatable value at exclusive rates.
When you book with me, you're ultimately booking with Barrhead Travel. You get the flexibility of a dedicated, single point of contact, backed by the total financial security, ATOL-protection and ABTA bonding of Barrhead Travel.
Common Questions
Why Use a Travel Agent?
Travel agents can nearly always use their collective buying power to secure better rates and more perks. You also get free added protections through ATOL and ABTA, which means you're protected should anything unexpected happen. Since agents don't charge customers for these services, booking with an agent to get better rates with more protection is a no-brainer.
I can book any type of holiday from an off-the-shelf package holiday with the likes of Jet2holidays to an entirely tailor-made holiday anywhere in the world. I book group tours, cruise holidays, fly-drives, private touring holidays, expedition adventures and multi-country itineraries. My product range spans all 7 continents.
Over 450+ trusted suppliers give us nett and commissionable rates, so when you book through me I collect my commission directly from our suppliers. Most suppliers extend lower selling rates to agents to protect long-standing relationships, so you'll often pay less than booking direct, too.
Yes. Over the years, I’ve taken many familiarisation trips to incredible destinations such as Cambodia, South Australia, Botswana and Tanzania. I’ve also enjoyed hundreds of hotel site inspections and cruise ship visits. I take 2-3 long-haul trips a year and have a deep understanding of what’s what in the travel world.
That's a tough one. In no special order my top 12 destinations visited are Japan, Vietnam, Orlando, Costa Rica, Aruba, Hawaii, Greece, Botswana, India, Tanzania, The South Pacific, and Alaska.
Not necessarily. The cost of a luxury trip ultimately depends on where you choose to go and what luxury means to you. Luxury is about finding the perfect combination of freedom, flexibility, comfort, and choice to suit your personal travel style. To one traveller, it means a premium coffee machine and a pillow menu in a vibrant, budget-friendly destination. To another, it means paying for exclusive access to a remote corner of the world where very few people get to visit. Because luxury has no single definition or fixed price tag, you don’t always have to pay through the nose to experience a deeply luxurious holiday.
Experiential travel taps into the notion that travel is a positive force for good. It promotes actively engaging with a destination’s underlying experience, rather than just passively sightseeing or ticking boxes off a list. Itineraries designed for experiential travel focus on emotional depth, learning, and self-discovery, so you can get closer to your destination and come home feeling positively changed by the travel experience.