About Us
Nightingale is the creation of Matt Shock and Hugo Snell, two experienced award-winning travel professionals who want to offer something more to their guests through unmatched service, fair pricing and truly experiential holidays.
In 2025, they decided to embark on the exciting journey of creating their own company, so they could better devote their time to their guests and ensuring that they experience a level of service well beyond what is currently offered by larger tour operators. Matt and Hugo offer personalised, dedicated and impassioned travel planning and service, all with the aim of creating bucket list holidays and lifelong memories for their guests.
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Why Nightingale?
The Nightingale is a bird known for its song and its creativity; rooted in folklore as a herald of Spring and brighter times ahead. Nightingales migrate from Africa to Europe, which encapsulates our biggest passions in the world of travel. This unpretentious and itinerant songbird captures so beautifully what we want Nightingale Luxury Travel to be; creative, dependable and the sign of exciting things to come from Africa, to Europe, and beyond.
At Nightingale we strive to create a personalised experience and service for our clients. We aim to show you during our first conversation why you would want to entrust your holiday planning to us, and how we can be the ones to make your travel dreams a reality.
Our Values:
Personal
Our holidays are not packages, they are tailored individually and no two are the same. We like to get to know our guests and really understand their needs and wants. Nightingale prides itself on creating unique and personal journeys for everyone. We love face to face meetings, celebrating birthdays or anniversaries, and remembering the often overlooked details to make our guests’ holidays all the more memorable.
Honest
We will always give you our honest recommendations and opinions, be it on hotels, destinations, excursions and everything in between. We are not going to do anything to just “make the sale”, but be candid as to our knowledge and expertise, and whether we think we can deliver your holiday plans to the level of excellence you deserve.
Service
With over 20 years in the industry between us, we understand what makes an amazing holiday and what a travel agent needs to provide to make that happen. We offer an unparalleled level of service and care for our clients and their holiday plans. Problems do occasionally occur while travelling, be it lost luggage, a delayed flight, or traffic causing you to miss that important dinner reservation. Our promise is that you will always speak to one of the Founders and we are here any time to assist with any aspect of your holiday - before or during travel.
Value
We want our guests to see value in what we do. Through our extensive supplier relationships, preferred partner memberships, unparalleled service and comprehensive list of additional services, we believe we provide unmatched value in luxury travel planning compared to a lot of larger tour operators. Nightingale aims to be as transparent as possible in our pricing and provide exceptional experiential and monetary value to our guests.
Other benefits:
ATOL Protection
Nightingale Luxury Travel is an independent agent for 360 Private Travel. All flights and flight-inclusive holidays on this website are financially protected by the ATOL scheme.
Virtuoso Membership
Our host partner agency, 360 Private Travel, is a member of the esteemed Virtuoso programme. This means when booking with Nightingale, we have access to a wide variety of additional benefits for a hugely diverse network of hotels, partners, cruises and other travel services across the world.
Preferred Partner Programmes
We have access to the benefits and rewards schemes for most hotel collections globally. When booking with Nightingale, if applicable, we will be able to secure added benefits and rewards for your hotel stays at most major hotel brands.
Terms & Conditions
Please see this link to our booking Terms & Conditions, which are provided by our host company, 360 Private Travel.
Meet Matt & Hugo
After working as a safari guide in Namibia and South Africa, Matt embarked on a career as a luxury travel consultant for multiple award winning luxury tour operators in the UK. Matt has travelled extensively across the world to follow his true passion, wildlife. He has been recognised by global luxury travel publications as one of the world’s leading safari specialists, and has always sought out the wilder places on Earth. He has experience in all things wildlife; from the Great Migration of Tanzania, the Orangutans of Borneo, or the jungles of Guyana - Matt creates sustainable and experiential itineraries for his clients in the pursuit of something wild.
Matt Shock
Co-Founder & Director
Hugo was born in Australia and ever since then has been lucky enough to travel to many parts of this beautiful world. Hugo spent his childhood travelling to multiple European destinations including learning to ski in the French Alps, beach holidays to Greece, Spain and Cyprus and a memorable road trip that covered most of Western Europe.
More recently, Hugo has travelled far and wide including two winter seasons in Canada (Banff & Whistler), 3 months travelling South America where the wonders of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil offered a wide range of enlightening experiences, as well as multiple holidays to Mediterranean classics. Having got married in Stockholm in 2022, Hugo has enjoyed longer haul holidays with his wife to Oman, Caribbean and a special honeymoon to Kenya & The Maldives.
For the past 10 years Hugo has been working in Luxury Travel and has specialised in helping families, couples, solo travellers and groups arrange their holidays to a wide range of stunning destinations. From group ski trips to incredible chalets in Verbier to multi-generational family holidays to Antigua; from honeymoons in the Maldives to solo trips around Tuscany & the Italian Lakes; Hugo thinks no holiday is the same and every trip deserves the greatest attention and care.
Hugo Snell
Co-Founder & Director
Our Process
Whether you enquire on our website or give us a call, we promise to get in touch with you as quickly as possible. We appreciate your holiday plans are important, and we believe they deserve to be treated as such. We prefer to have an initial call or meeting with you to understand what you are looking for, to get to know you, and see how we can help your travel dreams become reality. From there, we will go away and work with our trusted network of partners in your chosen destination to create a personalised itinerary which meets your requirements.
The main thing to understand is that the first iteration of your itinerary is in no way necessarily the finished product. We want to take the time to make sure your trip is perfect for you before proceeding to the next step, no matter how long it takes. After you are happy with your holiday plans, we kindly ask for a deposit to confirm the trip and proceed with the arrangements. Your money is protected through our host agency - 360 Private Travel - and we will always state committed and non-refundable elements of your deposit. Once the trip is confirmed, we will continue to work tirelessly so you receive documents in a timely fashion, and the concierge and personalised elements of your holiday are perfect. We will provide a host of pre-departure information to help with packing and planning, and be with you every step of the way from your initial enquiry, until you return home.
We offer assistance with excursions, restaurant recommendations and bookings, seat selection on flights, packing lists, destination support, and final travel documentation. Most importantly, we offer 24/7 assistance while you are travelling, and one of our Founders will always be around to help should things go awry.