Devaki Das is the founder of Weave A Thousand Journeys (WATJ), a travel company specializing in bespoke, luxury, curated vacations that blend culinary arts and architectural elegance. Inspired by a chaotic trip with friends in Tuscany in 2011, Devaki created WATJ to design seamless, personalized travel experiences with meticulous attention to detail, celebrating culture, food, wine, and architecture.
WATJ crafts unique travel experiences tailored to each destination. In Ireland, tours focus on archaeology and nature, while in Burgundy, the emphasis is on wine, cuisine, and wellness. Devaki’s passion for the culinary arts began at age eight, leading her to publish a cookbook by 17 and teach culinary arts at various institutions. Her deep knowledge of cooking, complemented by a certificate in Science and Cooking from HarvardX, ensures that WATJ offers immersive gastronomic experiences.
Devaki leverages her professional background in architecture, with her passion for the culinary arts and extensive network of experts, to curate unparalleled travel journeys that embody luxury, exclusive culinary adventures, and authentic architectural insights.
Company: Weave a Thousand Journeys
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company
Devaki Das: Hi! Thank you for this wonderful opportunity. I’m Devaki and founder of Weave a Thousand Journeys (WATJ), a luxury travel concierge service dedicated to crafting highly exclusive tailored vacations throughout Europe and Africa. It was my love of design that drew me to architecture and coming from a family architects it was sort of a given, but an even greater love of travel drew me to places far and wide. What we do at Weave A Thousand Journeys is curate vacations with an emphasis on cultural immersion, architecture, gastronomy and wine, incredible history, and local art. Each meticulously crafted luxury vacation fully immerses the client into the culture of a destination and intimately reflects their interests and desires. It’s all about people, spaces and emotions and I often say we aren’t just in the travel business, we are in the people business!
If you were in an elevator with Warren Buffett, how would you describe your company, your services or products? What makes your company different from others? What is your company’s biggest strength?
Devaki Das: Hi Mr. Buffett, I’m Devaki and my company is WEAVE A THOUSAND JOURNEYS. We curate ‘Bespoke Journeys for the Inquiring Mind’ – tailor-made luxury and ultra-luxe travel experiences that go beyond the typical tourist trail. What sets us apart is our focus on deeply immersive travel, our personal relationships on the ground that allows for our clients to deeply delve into diverse cultures.
Our biggest strength lies in our extensive knowledge of unique destinations in Europe, Africa and Asian and we known for our attention to detail. We are right fit for those who seek meaningful journeys, where every detail is meticulously planned to offer an extraordinary and thoughtful travel experience.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, is an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle to keep talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued, and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are you adapting to the current shift we see?
Devaki Das: Long before COVID, long before this current shift, WATJ has always been a team of international women who work in different time zones and we all work remotely. I believe that we all need a reason to wake up, a purpose that is bigger than ourselves – i.e. meaningful work. At WEAVE A THOUSAND JOURNEYS, we create bespoke and enriching travel experiences for our clients making their travel dreams come true and this offers a positive, meaningful and engaging context for our team.
We are performance driven – our goals and best practices all focus on ensuring that our client experience when they travel is as flawless and to that end, I might be uncompromising at times, but it’s all in that spirit of excellence. But having said that, I do make it a point that we celebrate our achievements with shout-outs, thank you notes and of course we are all rewarded at the end of the year we are a profit sharing company – we enjoy holiday gifts and a bonus check just in time for the holidays. This is so we all feel that at the end of the day, all our hard work was worth it and when we meet our collective goals, we all win – together.
Professional development is another cornerstone, especially during the quieter end-of-year periods and this includes training sessions and workshops. My near-future goal is to arrange an annual team travel week so that everyone on the team has the opportunity to meet in person, experience first hand what we do for our clients and broaden horizons.
More than anything else I think a healthy work-life balance is key. We embrace a European model where we work shorter hours on Fridays, follow flexible hours, and as long as the work gets done, it doesn’t matter if someone is working on a beach or riding the Bernina Express in Switzerland!
Finally, since we are all remote, it’s fun to get on a zoom call regularly and just chat about our lives, have open communication channels, my team knows that they can openly disagree with me and they also know that I won’t hesitate to present a different point of view that may be contrary to theirs. We aren’t shy I’ll tell you that but in the end it’s about listening and learning from each other, keeping our egos in check and fostering a positive, supportive and fun work environment.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Devaki Das: Our business runs mostly on referrals and repeat clients so we use online business tools mainly to function more efficiently and socials to continue to enhance our credibility and presence in the luxury travel space.
Our client meetings are often via virtual meetings, and all of our clients receive their personalized travel itineraries on a travel app that updates in real-time on their mobile devices, tablets etc. We also offer 24/7 virtual support which sets us apart and makes a huge difference to our client experience on the ground. We continue to work on boosting our online presence through strategic content marketing and engaging and consistent social media content.
As I previously mentioned, we have thrived as a team of international women, working 100% remotely and all in different time zones. I don’t see that changing. It’s what makes our team so rich and diverse.
By leveraging these strategies, I believe that WEAVE A THOUSAND JOURNEYS is well-positioned to continue providing exceptional travel experiences while capitalizing on the growth in online business. Our combination of technological tools, personalized service, and a diverse remote team ensures we stay ahead of the curve in the luxury travel space.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Devaki Das: I believe that that we are in a correction phase in the luxury travel space. In 2023, post-COVID everyone wanted to travel no matter what the cost and there was a fever in our industry. Now I think we are going back to 2019 levels of demand and clients are more thoughtful about how and where they are spending their moolah. However, that does not mean that prices globally have gone back to 2019 levels – quite to the contrary! So the challenge is stretching our clients dollars so that get the absolute most from their investment into travel.
We are definitely in a time of price sensitivity to the increasing cost of travel among high-net worth clients in the luxury and ultra-luxe travel space. I think this presents an opportunity to work with a winder range of accommodations, giving our clients better priced options in destinations without compromising our brand, it also allows for growth in the river cruising sector which I think presents the absolute best balance between value and luxury among budget conscious travelers and lastly I think it is an opportunity to continue to market and encourage multigenerational travel – we find that more are more families are traveling together and it is a perfect way to build memories that last a lifetime as well we build a legacy.
As we continue to be sensitive to travel motivators in the market so since we see this push towards families wanting to spend more and more time with families, we will continue to work towards marketing these tours, similarly we are seeing a push towards people looking for opportunities to travel with purpose so we continue to work on offering such transformative experiences and finally the interest in wellness vacations continues to be on the rise so continuing to learn about the best opportunities and in the regions of the world we work in something we will continue to do and work on.
At Weave A Thousand Journeys, our finger is on the pulse of the market and by addressing price sensitivity with innovative, value-driven solutions and capitalizing on new travel trends, we aim to provide exceptional, thoughtful, and memorable travel experiences.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Devaki Das: In my opinion one of the most underrated yet crucial part of running a company is the ability to clearly identify a problem once it crops up (that led to a point of failure), discuss to come up with a solution and then implement said solution as part of your best practices. It is a process that continues throughout the life of a company and is quite underestimated because in an ideal scenario it should be fluid and ongoing.
To give you an example, we created a checklist for each item in the travel documents that should be completed before the final travel docs are published for client use. On paper this works perfectly. In reality as we conducted quality control checks we learned that hard way that some items were falling through the cracks – a simple example was that in one recent client’s case, we had recommend the point of departure to be Geneva but the client purchased their flights from Zurich and did not let this be known to us. So we still had his transfers from the hotel to Geneva airport and not Zurich. It was only during our final call with the client before departure that this error surfaced.
Technically, this should have shown up during our quality control checks (QC) but it hadn’t been caught by any of the 3 people doing the checks. So we quickly identified the problem being that there was a gap in our checklist and (a) we needed to add a line item in the QC check list that actually verifies points of arrival and departure v/s transfers. (b) we needed to add a line item reverifying any last minute changes to their airline tickets 48 hours before travel and (c) we implemented a solution that increased accountability by uploading our QC checklist for each job on google docs shared by the whole team, making it easy to identify if a task is left open ended or un verified. And until each item is verified and checked off by each person on the QC team we simply do not hand over the travel docs to our clients. This process is tedious, its ongoing but it is critical to our clients having a flawless user experience when they travel.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Devaki Das: I have always admired business leaders who seem to possess a nearly supernatural talent for strategic thinking. They have an uncanny ability to zoom out and see the big picture at any given moment, and have a profound understanding of industry pressures and dynamics—both regionally and globally. They can anticipate future market trends well before they become evident to the rest of us.
Wouldn’t that be an incredible superpower to have? I would love to be able to develop a bird’s eye view that allows me to skillfully connect the dots to achieve my goals while maintaining business agility to adapt and pivot quickly as the environment evolves. This would enable me to foresee emerging travel trends, offering experiences that cater to niche markets and keeping Weave A Thousand Journeys at the forefront of luxury travel and up-and-coming destinations long before they become mainstream.
What does “success” in 2024 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision
Devaki Das: Success in 2024 for me is a blend of achieving personal and professional fulfillment as well as acknowledging the people, spaces and experiences around me that make it all worthwhile.
Keep it interesting! It’s always incredibly exciting when we are asked to create bespoke itineraries for destinations that are beyond the norm. For example for Italy, it’s a lot more fun to create an itinerary that centers around the UNESCO gastronomic cities of Alba, Bergamo and Parma instead of the usual requests of Rome and Florence (as much as I love these cities)! Crafting unique and unexpected journeys keeps the adventure alive for both us and our clients.
Clients with heart! Our clients are at the heart of what we do. And we have it in our power to add a little magic to their lives by the moments we create for them during their travels. Nothing beats working with clients who get as excited as we do by the proposals we create and genuinely appreciate what we bring to the table. Knowing that our clients are open to our suggestions and trust our recommendations, gives us the artistic liberty to create truly special and personalized travel experiences is such a gift.
Live life well! Striking a harmonious balance between professional commitments and personal well-being is essential. As our business thrives and grows, I recognize that it’s equally important to carve out time for personal passions, family, and self-care. Managing stress better and traveling more would be fantastic goals to achieve this year and beyond.
But at the end of the day, success for me means waking up each morning to do what I love, surrounded by the people I love, and helping create memories that will last a lifetime. That, in itself, is my ultimate vision of success.
