Who We Are
A small atelier, held deliberately small.
Circle & Key was founded on a simple observation: the most memorable parts of a journey are almost never the parts that can be booked.
The hotel can be reserved by anyone. The private house belonging to a family who rarely lend it cannot. The restaurant has a telephone number. The kitchen of the woman who taught the chef does not.
We spend most of our time not designing itineraries but maintaining the relationships that make them possible — in Corsica, in Fez, in the Ionian, in the Atlas, and in a small number of other places we know properly rather than broadly.
We work by introduction and enquiry. There is no reservation system on this website, and there never will be.
What We Believe
Four things we do not compromise on.
Small by design
We turn work away. A limited number of journeys each year is the only way the same people can remain responsible for every detail of each one.
Relationships over inventory
We do not maintain a portfolio of properties. We maintain friendships with the people who own, cook in, guide through and quietly run the places that matter.
Discretion in both directions
We publish very little about our clients, and very little about the doors we can open. Both of those silences are part of what we are selling.
Nothing repeated
No journey is sold twice. The three published itineraries exist to show how we think, not what you will receive.
The Hand Behind It
Eighteen years of private journeys, before a single one of ours was published.
Circle & Key is founded and led by Asher Afriat, who has spent eighteen years designing private journeys for families, principals and their advisors — work carried out almost entirely by referral, and almost never spoken about publicly.
That practice began in one country and was built on a single conviction: that a journey is only as good as the people who will answer the telephone at eleven at night. The same conviction, and largely the same address book of houses, guides and families, now travels further.
You are not commissioning an agency. You are commissioning the person whose name is on the door.
- 18 years
- Designing private journeys
- By referral
- How most clients arrive
- One desk
- Founder-led from first note to last night
Introductions
Speak with us
Most of our clients arrive through someone they trust. If you have found us another way, that is entirely welcome — begin here.