Travel agencies sell what's available. Cypress builds what doesn't exist yet.
There's no catalogue here, no preferred supplier list, no margin-driven recommendations. Every single trip starts from scratch, built around the person actually going.
Cypress exists because the travel industry got very good at moving people from place to place — and very bad at actually listening to why they wanted to go. The gap between what most people book and what they actually needed is where Cypress lives.
The best trips aren't the ones that go perfectly. They're the ones that were planned well enough that nothing got in the way of being there.
What Cypress stands for
Three things that don't change. Ever.
Nothing generic.
Every recommendation is earned. Every lodge, guide, and route has a reason behind it — not a commission, not a partnership, not a habit. If Sloane wouldn't go there herself, it doesn't make the list.
Total transparency.
You see every cost, every option, every trade-off before anything is confirmed. No surprises on arrival. No hidden markups. The planning fee is clear. The travel costs are itemized. That's the whole deal.
The details matter.
Which side of the valley the lodge faces. Whether the guide speaks the right language. What time the light hits the ridge. These aren't small things. They're the difference between a good trip and one you talk about for years.
Why Cypress exists
Because most people don't need more travel options. They need someone who knows which option is actually right for them — and isn't afraid to say no to the ones that aren't.
I gave a vague brief and got a trip I couldn't have built on my own in a hundred hours of searching.
Every camp, every crossing, every early morning — chosen with a precision I didn't know to ask for. It was exactly the trip I didn't know I needed.
— Sarah K., 14-day mountain crossing
We told Sloane we wanted to disappear for two weeks.
No itinerary pressure, no tourist crowds, no decisions to make. What we got was the most intentional trip we've ever taken. Every morning felt earned.
— James & Réa, 12-day Iceland & Faroe Islands
I'd been putting off this trip for three years because I didn't know where to start.
Sloane asked me four questions and came back with something I wouldn't have found in three years of searching. I stopped overthinking it and just went.
— James & Réa, 12-day Iceland & Faroe Islands
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The person behind cypress agency
About sloane
I spent years inside one of the big tour operators.
I was good at the job. I knew the systems, the suppliers, the preferred properties. I also knew — pretty quickly — that the system wasn't built for the traveler. It was built around margin, volume, and repeatability.
Meanwhile, I was planning my own trips completely differently. The detour that added a day but changed everything. The lodge with no website that a local contact mentioned once. The crossing that took three modes of transport and was worth every one of them.
I couldn't reconcile the gap. So I stopped trying to, and built Cypress instead.
"I know what a trip looks like when it's built around a spreadsheet. Cypress is what it looks like when it's built around a person."
A few things worth knowing about me.
I don't have a favourite destination. I have a favourite feeling — that specific combination of cold air, total quiet, and the physical tiredness that only comes from a day spent actually moving through a landscape.
I plan every Cypress trip the way I plan my own. Which means I'm still researching at midnight. Still reading trip reports from 2019 to cross-reference what's changed. Still messaging contacts to ask whether a place is actually as good as it looks.
It's not a process. It's just how I work.
Currently
Researching routes in northern Greenland for a client who said "remote and cold, no limits."
Last trip
Ten days in Finnish Lapland — dog sledding, one glass cabin, zero regrets.
My rule
If it's on the first page of Google, I keep looking.
Off-duty
Somewhere in the mountains, probably planning the next trip on a laptop by a fire.
