A client is paying for the things that got taken out of the trip. I cannot find anything in this trade that bills for that.

Someone books ten days and asks for four cities in it. The advisor knows on the first call that it will not work.

Getting them down to three takes a week. Two calls, a rebuilt plan, and a conversation nobody enjoys about which city goes.

That week is the best work she does all month. It is also the only work that month with no number attached to it anywhere.

Commission and the planning fee both count things.

Commission is a share of what the client spends. Three cities can spend less than four. One less arrival, one less set of transfers, one fewer hotel to book.

And where a planning fee is worked out rather than guessed, it is worked out by addition. A base rate, then a supplement for each extra day, each extra traveller, each extra leg, each extra complication.

So the fee counts the pieces and the commission counts the spend, and neither of them has anywhere to put an hour spent taking something out.

She was paid on three cities. The fourth one was the work.

Same shape on a cruise. Talking a client out of an excursion in half the ports takes knowing the ports, and it makes the trip cost less.

It happens inside the proposal too, more quietly. Adding another property is the easy direction. Working out which two of the eight are actually right for this family, and then defending the cut, is the slow part, and it produces a shorter document.

A shorter proposal looks like less work and takes more of it.

More is not free on the client's side either. Past a point, another option does not make choosing easier. It makes it harder.

And removal is invisible by construction. The client never sees the version that was not sent. They come home, they say it is the best trip they have taken, and the reason it was is a thing that is not in it.

I do not think anyone designed this. A percentage of the booking is the obvious way to pay for a booking. It holds up right until the work in that week is the work that makes the booking smaller.

The planning fee was the trade's answer to the unpaid stretch before a booking, and it does that job. It does not touch this one. It is priced against the odds of being booked, and it is still counted in units of more.

I write software for this trade, so I will say the obvious thing about my own side of it. The tools are built to add, mine included, and nothing I have made puts a price on the option you talked somebody out of.

I have not found a word for it. No editing fee. No line on anything that reads: I stopped you taking the version of this trip you would have come home exhausted from.

Has anyone found a way to charge for what they took out? Or does the client who takes your advice always end up paying you less than the client who ignores it?