The House has noticed a pattern among the well-travelled: they go in October. Not August. Not the holidays. October. There is a reason, and it is not the price.
October is the month the world is at its best and the crowds are at their rest. Europe has returned from August — the Parisians are back, the Italians have reopened, the Greeks have stopped performing for the season and are simply living in their islands again. The light has changed: lower, longer, the kind that makes a city look the way you remembered it, or the way you hoped it would. The heat has gone but the warmth has not. The sea is still swimmable in the Mediterranean; the gardens are still in bloom in England; the maples are beginning in Japan.
The wealthy travel in October because October is the month that rewards judgment over calendar. August is the month of the calendar — the school holidays, the enforced exodus, the cities emptied and the coasts full. The member who can choose does not choose August. The member who can choose chooses the month the world is at its best for those who know how to look.
There is a second reason, and the House says it plainly: October is the month of the long lunch. The terraces are still open, but the heat no longer demands the siesta, and the evening begins at seven rather than nine. The days are the right length — long enough for a journey, short enough to make the evening feel earned. The House's journeys in October are built around the long lunch and the early evening, and the member returns having lived at a tempo the August traveller never reaches.
The House's counsel: if the member can choose the month, choose October. If the member must travel in August — for the children, for the calendar — the House composes it well, and sends the family to the places that handle August with grace: the Scandinavian coast, the high Alps, the places where August is the honest season. But the House's honest recommendation, for the member who asks, is October. The world is arranged; October is the hour.