| “Essentially, if you can imagine the dream, I’ll make it into a reality for you,” says Adam Quinn, co-owner of Latatudes & Adatudes on Maui, which offers personal guide services throughout the islands as well as group outings. “We’ve been doing it for about four years, and (business is) increasing almost week by week,” he says.
One wedding couple staying on Lanai will indulge in a special treat this month, says Jason Latas, Quinn’s partner in Latatudes & Adatudes. They will go off-road touring on the way to meet a helicopter waiting to fly them to Maui, where they will get a bird’s-eye view of the island before landing in a remote spot for lunch by a waterfall. Other highlights will include an upcountry wine-tasting tour and a chauffered ride to their resort on Maui.
Another adventure-packed, interisland odyssey for a vacationing family of three, who were occasionally joined by guests, lasted 27 days and cost at least $50,000, Quinn says. On the family’s day trip to Lanai, they toured in a Hummer, geared up for riding quad runners, pedaled mountain bikes to a deserted beach and relished a private catered lunch in Lanai City. Other days, the vacationers explored hiking trails along Kauai’s Na Pali Coast, went scuba diving off Niihau and toured Hawaii Volcanos National Park on the Big Island.
Latatudes & Adatudes also plans Maui day trips that include paragliding over Hana, spelunking through lava tubes and, for one celebrity seeking privacy last summer, paddling a kayak beyond where any fans were likely to be.
“For a lot of people, the dollar figure is not part of the equation. They just want the high level of service, they want the exclusive nature of the tour,” Quinn says. “They want to do something they’ve never done before. In some cases, they want to be able to go home and brag to their friends, ‘Guess what I did.’”
His clients have included a group of six business executives from the East Coast who were accustomed to traveling the world on an expense account. “They said they wanted to do something they’ve never done before, and we fit the bill,” Quinn says. He arranged a Lanai excursion that included a sailboat cruise and a guitarist playing Hawaiian songs on the beach.
Vacationers who ask for custom itineraries have included “don’t-comers, celebrities, people who've worked for 30 years and received their pension and want the blow-out of their lives.”
(Excerpted from a longer article, the rest of which is not reproduced here)
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