Virtual Assistant Travel Planning: Planning the Trip vs Running It

The Half of the Trip Nobody Quotes You For

Virtual assistant travel planning is usually sold as the front half of a trip: research the flights, compare the hotels, build the itinerary, send it over for approval. Real work, and a good assistant does it well.

Now think about the last business trip that went sideways on you. The itinerary was probably fine. What cost you was the connection cancelled on a Sunday night, the front desk with no record of a confirmed room, the client who pushed Tuesday’s meeting to Wednesday after you had already booked Wednesday’s flight home. Nearly everything you actually want travel help with happens in those hours. Almost none of it happens between nine and five.

I’m Nir Sabato, co-founder of Catch. We built Catch as an AI Executive Assistant to take admin off executives’ plates, and business travel turned out to be the clearest case for it. Not because planning a trip is hard. Because running one needs help outside business hours, including someone who can find alternatives, ask for purchase approval and make a phone call.

One Trip, Hour by Hour

Same trip, told as a clock instead of a checklist. Chicago, Monday night to Wednesday, one client meeting on Tuesday that justifies the whole thing.

Tuesday 2pm, three weeks out: the research

Your assistant pulls the flight options, checks them against the meeting window, finds three hotels near the client’s office, sends you a short list. All of that sits inside a virtual assistant’s working day, and it’s the part the category is genuinely good at.

Wednesday 10am, three weeks out: the booking

Flights booked, hotel confirmed, a car arranged for the airport run. The itinerary lands in your inbox. Nothing here needs improving.

Sunday 11:40pm: the change

Your connection into Chicago is cancelled. The airline app offers a rebooking that puts you on the ground at 2pm Tuesday, forty minutes after the meeting starts. You’re the only person awake who knows that 2pm is worthless.

Monday 6am: the rebook

At midnight there was a better routing, one that had you in Chicago by Monday afternoon with the day to prepare. By six it’s gone. Your assistant sees the cancellation email when their day starts, which is after the window the problem was solvable in, and what’s left gets you in late Monday evening instead.

Monday 9pm: the arrival

You check in and the hotel has you down for one night instead of two. The rate you were booked on changed and the confirmation never caught up. Somebody needs to call the front desk. It’s nine in the evening, so that somebody is you.

Three of those five moments landed outside the hours you bought. The first two went perfectly.

The Gap Is Coverage, Not Competence

This is the plain version of the trade-off, and it matters because the usual pitch against human assistants is that they’re worse at the job. They aren’t. A good executive assistant reads a cancelled flight correctly, because they know which meeting is load-bearing and which one can slip. The problem is structural. You’re buying a defined quantity of one person’s time, and travel breaks on its own schedule.

Providers know this and have built real answers to it. Prialto includes trained primary and secondary backup assistants on every account, so there’s continuity when the main assistant is unavailable. Time etc builds cover for sickness and holiday into the service. Magic runs a separate 24/7 concierge for urgent tasks or when your primary assistant is offline, and full-time executive assistant clients get ten hours of that concierge work a week. Fancy Hands puts a secondary dedicated assistant behind its dedicated tier. Zirtual’s assistants can pull in another Zirtual assistant when a task sits outside their expertise, and Wing guarantees a replacement assistant within 24 hours at no extra cost. Genuine mitigations, not marketing.

They’re still mitigations of the same constraint. Athena’s assistants work forty hours a week across five business days. Zirtual promises a response during business hours within two hours, which is a reasonable commitment and also tells you plainly when the clock is running. A backup assistant covers absence. A concierge covers urgency when your primary assistant is offline. None of that is a knock on the people doing the work; it’s just what a staffed service is.

There’s a real column on the other side, too. Expense work is standard across the category: Athena’s assistants handle expense tracking, invoices, and refund chasing, plus household and medical coordination; Prialto’s process expense reports and Magic’s compile them for review; Wing’s track expenses and process invoices. Belay’s plan travel from start to finish and rebook when plans change. Catch doesn’t administer expenses today, and it can’t do work that needs somebody physically present. Those two pieces still need a person. Supported flight and hotel coordination can also be delegated to software, subject to availability, approval and supplier terms.

What You Pay For, and How It Is Counted

The pricing shape tells you what you’re buying. Human virtual assistant services are priced by the hour, by the head, or by the request, because that is what’s being sold.

Provider	How it is priced
Catch	$99 per person monthly subscription; travel beta for eligible customers, with approval before purchase; fares, hotel charges and supplier fees separate
Time etc	$390 a month for 10 hours, up to $2,160 a month for 60 hours. Unused hours roll over
Zirtual	$599 a month for 12 hours, up to $1,699 a month for 45 hours. Hours do not roll over
Wing Assistant	$699 a month for 80 hours part-time, $999 for 160 hours full-time. Executive assistants from $1,299 part-time and $1,999 full-time; US-based assistants from $2,499 part-time and $4,999 full-time
Athena	$3,000 a month on annual billing, or $3,600 a month month-to-month after a 90-day initial commitment, for one dedicated full-time assistant
Fancy Hands	Standard plans are priced by request: $35 a month for 3 standard requests, $55 for 5, $125 for 15, where a standard request is defined as up to 20 minutes of work. A separate dedicated-assistant tier is billed to the minute, with no rate published

Belay doesn’t publish its own tiers; it notes that US-based virtual assistants typically run $1,200 to $3,000 a month, or $30 to $75 an hour.

Figures above come from each provider’s own published pricing as we last checked it. The point isn’t that one number beats another. It’s that a trip which breaks twice costs you more hours on a metered plan, while a flat assistant subscription stays the same. Fare differences, hotel charges and supplier change or cancellation fees can still increase the trip cost under either model.

How Catch Handles the Same Trip

For eligible beta customers, Catch finds supported business flights and hotels, books after approval, and helps with supported changes. No travel dashboard to log into, no search results to pick through. You ask in whatever channel you already use, or Catch comes to you first.

Corporate travel booking is in beta for selected Catch customers. It covers supported business flights and hotels, with approval required before purchase or rebooking. Fares, room charges, and supplier change or cancellation fees are separate from the $99 per person monthly subscription. Ground transport may need separate arrangements. See the travel beta.

It spots the trip before you ask

A conference receipt lands in your inbox, or a meeting in another city appears on your calendar, and Catch comes back with the flight and the hotel ready to book. That’s the shape of business travel that makes this work: the same cities, the same routes, the same conference every year.

It books, rather than researching for you

For eligible beta customers, Catch presents supported flight and hotel options, including prices and relevant supplier terms. It books after you approve the purchase.

It handles the change when the change happens

When a connection is cancelled at 11:40pm, eligible beta customers can ask Catch to review supported alternatives against the meeting window. It checks availability, fare rules and supplier fees, and asks for approval before purchase or rebooking. Completion depends on the supplier and task.

It makes the calls the last mile needs

Catch places real outbound phone calls and identifies itself as your AI assistant. That covers the hotel holding your reservation wrong, the late checkout you need because your flight moved, the room detail you asked for. It calls out on your behalf. It doesn’t pick up your personal incoming calls, any more than a human assistant would.

It uses the travel policy you provide

Share your travel policy, budget and approval requirements so Catch can use them when proposing supported options. Confirm compliance before purchase; Catch does not replace a company travel-policy enforcement or approval-routing system.

It keeps what you told it once

Preferred airline, seat, hotel class, and the things you’ve complained about before. Flag a hotel with no gym once and you stop being offered hotels without gyms. If you want to review a better rate, eligible beta customers can ask Catch to check supported alternatives, cancellation terms and fees before approving a rebooking.

What Catch Does Not Cover

• Expenses, receipts, and reimbursement. Catch books the trip; it doesn’t administer the spend. Expenses are on our roadmap but they aren’t shipped, so don’t buy Catch for them today.
• Physical errands and gifts. Anything that needs hands in a room is outside what Catch does.

Who This Is For

• Executives, founders, and business owners in the US who travel the same routes over and over: the same conferences, the same client cities, the same hotels
• Leaders whose trips hang on one meeting that cannot slip
• Teams who already have administrative help in working hours and keep losing evenings and weekends to travel that moved
• Anyone weighing a first hire for travel support and unsure whether the volume justifies a salary or a metered plan

How It Works

1. Sign up and connect your email. Gmail or Outlook, over OAuth. Catch works with Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar. Setup takes under three minutes.
2. Tell it where you need to be. By Slack, email, text message, iMessage, or a phone call. A voice note works too.
3. Review and approve a supported option. Eligible beta customers confirm the flight or hotel, price, supplier terms and policy compliance before Catch purchases it. Ground transport may need separate arrangements.
4. Ask about supported changes. Catch can review flight and hotel alternatives and call about hotel details; purchases or rebookings require approval.
5. Give feedback on your preferences. Catch learns what to propose next time. Travel purchases and rebookings still require approval.

What Changes

For eligible beta customers, Catch can reduce the research and coordination around supported flight and hotel changes. You review alternatives and approve purchases, while the assistant carries more of the detail. The subscription remains $99 per person a month; fares, hotel charges and supplier change or cancellation costs are separate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Get Started

If your trips are planned well and still cost you your evenings, the thing to fix is coverage, not planning. Eligible beta customers can ask Catch to find supported flights and hotels from calendar and inbox context and help review changes, with approval before purchase or rebooking. The subscription is $99 per person a month with voice included and a 10-day free trial; fares, hotel charges and supplier fees are separate.

Get Started and ask about travel beta availability for your next trip.

Provider sources

Primary sources for the pricing and service descriptions: Time Etc, Zirtual, Wing, Athena, Fancy Hands, BELAY, Prialto, Magic. Billing cycle, eligibility, usage allowances and add-ons can change the total; confirm current terms with the provider.