Emma Grede has built brands with Kim Kardashian, raised four kids in Los Angeles and just spent months on a book tour for Start With Yourself — so when she talks travel, she's earned the airtime. Speaking to Condé Nast Traveller UK, the east London-born entrepreneur shared the habits, hotels and hacks behind a very well-flown life.

Her most inviolable rule is packing: total organisation, starting with underwear and pyjamas, building outfits from there. She travels with a carry-on, a big handbag and three more bags nested inside it — and in all her years of flying, she's never once forgotten something crucial. Her other hard rule? iPads are banned at home but unlimited on planes. Her kids genuinely believed iPads came with the aircraft until they were five or six; the moment wheels touch down, the devices go back in the bag.

Jet lag gets a three-pronged attack: exercise immediately on arrival (a park run in London or New York does it), a supplement regime tweaked with magnesium at night and creatine for brain fog, and eating her way through the time change. Flights and hotels, meanwhile, haven't been her problem for 18 years — her husband Jens books everything, and nothing goes wrong.

On the places worth the hype, Grede is emphatic about the Aman in Kyoto: moss-covered walls, moss floors, a property she says outshines its own photography. Her luxury 'made it' moment was a split-level suite at the Ritz in Paris, doors opening onto Place Vendôme, gold swan taps included — a far cry from the flea-bag room where running tights on the floor sent her packing. Her go-to nightcap is an Antica Formula vermouth, one large ice cube, orange rind, at Claridge's Fumoir.

Her best meals follow a similar pattern of hype confirmed: Thomas Keller's French Laundry in Napa, which she calls boring-but-true, and where Keller cooked a caviar menu for her 40th — after she insisted he swap the tempura chicken for proper fried chicken for her family.

Two traditions stand out. Her annual girls' trip — no kids, no husbands, dates never moved, roughly 27 children between the group — has taken the friends to Kyoto and this year Capri, with next year's destination chosen at the final dinner; Patagonia is in the frame. And her ideal family holiday is a boat: this summer's route ran from Corsica to the Maddalena Islands (turquoise water she compares to the Caribbean), then Sardinia and up to the south of France, dropping anchor in empty bays with nothing but a sliver of sand.

Why care? Because Grede's picks are practical, not aspirational fluff — a packing checklist you can steal, a screen-time policy that saves long-haul flights, and a reminder that the annual friends' trip is worth defending like a meeting you can't move.