Alaska

Most people arrive at 'Alaska' having already booked one of three quite different trips without realising it: a big-ship cruise along the Inside Passage, an independent road trip around the Southcentral/Interior 'triangle' (Anchorage–Seward–Denali–Fairbanks), or a dedicated winter trip to Fairbanks for the aurora. Each is a good trip. Very few itineraries do all three well, mostly because the state is enormous - Anchorage to Fairbanks is a 6-hour drive, and neither is anywhere near Juneau, which has no road access to the rest of the state at all.

The classic 7-day big-ship cruise is the easiest way to see glaciers and whales without any logistics on your end, and it's genuinely spectacular from the water. What it doesn't give you is much of Alaska beyond the port towns - Juneau, Ketchikan, and Skagway are lovely, but they're a narrow slice. If a client has 10+ days, I usually suggest pairing a shorter cruise or ferry leg with a few days inland around Denali; it costs more in planning, but it's the difference between seeing Alaska from a boat and actually standing in it.

Aurora trips are their own category and worth treating separately rather than bolting onto a summer visit - the midnight sun that makes June-August so good for wildlife and glaciers means there's no dark sky to see the lights in. Fairbanks in the deep winter months, ideally with a few nights booked for weather flexibility, is the more honest way to chase them.