The DMC: Destination (Disappointment) Management Company

Irony is me, the travel advisor, paying someone else to plan a trip, when the thing I end up writing about is precisely what does not go to plan.

Soup in a bag on a snowy highway in Finland.

Finland wasn’t even on the itinerary.

What is a DMC?

Quick rundown. The DMC, or Destination Management Company, is an on-the-ground agency based in a destination of choice, responsible for consulting clients and creating a detailed itinerary suited to their desires — everything from hotels to excursions to transportation. Nothing is off-limits. 

Most casual travelers have not heard of the DMC, because most of the time, they are not at all necessary. Due to their all-encompassing comprehensiveness, they are also quite expensive.

When are they necessary? For clients planning multi-stop, jam-packed trips to an unfamiliar destination where they want to do all the things but know little about what and where exactly and do not have the time to research and plan.

In this instance, those clients were my mother and I, off to Norway. And though we are both experienced, independent solo travelers who prefer an afternoon of wandering aimlessly to boarding a bus of mass tourism, the DMC was the right decision. 

It was, for me, also a professional experiment. What do these DMC people know that I do not? If I were in-the-know about Norway, could I plan an equally great trip?

Gratuitous answer: I could.

But there’s something the both of us — the DMC and the travel agent — cannot do.

—

I’ve written before about expectation management. The merits. The mere feasibility.

I’ve written and I’ve arrived time and time again at the same half-baked answer. Or, lack of answer, depending on how you choose to look at it.

Which is: it’s impossible not to expect things. The mind is told to put xyz on schedule — okay, set. It’s on schedule.

But the fact is this knowledge, this expectation, can indeed lead to disappointment. Thus, some extra-enlightened folks may argue it is best not to expect anything at all…

Bottom line: things don’t always work out.

So it is ironic, isn’t it, to employ a DMC to create a 12-day itinerary of activities and adventures, to anticipate, to expect, to look forward to, on a trip involving many variables outside of their control — say, the weather on a trip to Northern Norway in mid-November — when you really shouldn’t be expecting anything set in stone at all.

But it’s always the color outside of the lines that leaves a mark, right?

Right.

If everything this DMC outlined went according to plan, that would be nice, but… too predictable. 

This is travel we’re talking about. The best adventures are those of misadventure, after all.

If I am on a trip and everything is going perfectly to plan, something is suspicious.

So it was that my mom and I found ourselves in Tromsø — capital of the Arctic, home of the Northern Lights — during a week-long storm of slush. No real snow, just mushy, grey shit. No visibility for miles.

So! It was that on the night of our DMC-arranged Aurora Minibus chase, our guides consulted their tracking devices and weather apps and decided our fate.

We’re driving to Finland.

Indeed! We drove two and a half hours under slanted sheets of sleet, across the Norwegian border and into Finland to find a small gap in the blanket of clouds and a chance at spotting the elusive Northern Lights. 

And amazingly, we found the gap. 

So it was that a group of us stood on the side of a major highway in northern Finland. Bundled up and looking like a lost posse of multi-colored Michelin men, we stood and stared at the sky.

And we stared.

And we stared some more.

At one point, our guide prepared hot drinks and told stories to distract us.

One frigid hour later, she prepared what I learned was a Norwegian specialty: soup in a bag. Created for the nation of campers, one simply boils water, pours it into said bag of powder and viola! Hot soup. Tomato, beef, curry…

And it was good. It was “good soup”.

Adam Driver voice, implied.

—

There were no lights that night.

A shame, but not a disappointment. And not because we are explicitly instructed not to get our hopes up.

But because for me — blame it on travel fatigue or a coping mechanism — there was something inherently more interesting and amusing and yes, more beautiful about eating soup out of a bag on the side of a highway in Finland than seeing the Northern Lights.

This is the better story.

The ones where everything works out are predictable. And won’t get any real press.

Next time you’re disappointed in the outcome of something, remember that whatever maybe not-great thing is happening to you? The main character (that is you) just got a smarter set of writers.

It’s called character development.

The only real Disappointment (Destination) Management Company we can rely on is our mind.

ONWARDS,

Mag