Kensington has broadened its collaboration with Ancestry, adding new itineraries to its Personal Heritage Journeys collection, this time featuring Sicily, Ghana, Scotland and Ireland. The program builds trips entirely around a family’s roots rather than a country’s highlights, pairing a Kensington Destination Expert with a genealogist from AncestryProGenealogists to design custom routes centered on the sites and events tied to a client’s own history.
“The most meaningful journeys are personal, shaped not only by where someone travels, but by why that place matters to them,” said Helen Giontsis, president of Kensington, in a press statement. “By expanding our work with AncestryProGenealogists, we can help more travelers experience the places connected to their family history through journeys designed entirely around their individual discoveries.”
Kensington Dives Deep
Kensington launched Personal Heritage Journeys in March 2021 with Ancestry, combining DNA insights with professional genealogical research. Each itinerary is led by local private guides who specialize in the history and culture of the region, and clients can add an onsite genealogist for additional context along the way. Three levels of pre-trip research are available, ranging from foundational lookups to comprehensive investigation into a family’s tree.
“Family history takes on a whole new meaning when you can experience it beyond names and dates—by walking the streets your ancestors knew, visiting the places that shaped their lives and seeing firsthand where your story began,” said Kyle Betit, travel program manager and senior genealogist at Ancestry, in a press statement. “Through our work with Kensington, the discoveries uncovered through DNA and family trees become deeply personal journeys rooted in each traveler’s unique history.”
The expanded collection now includes updated and new itineraries in Sicily, Ireland, Japan, Germany, Scotland, Poland, England and Ghana. In Sicily, the Walk in the Shade of a Grandfather’s Olive Grove itinerary can trace a family from a baptismal record in Palermo to the hillside town it left a generation ago, including meetings with families still living on the land and tastings of olives grown from the same soil that once fed a client’s grandfather.
In Ghana, Reclaim a Story Beyond the Door of No Return traces roots for members of the African diaspora, connecting travelers to the Doors of No Return and the shoreline their ancestors were taken from, alongside visits to Accra, Kumasi and Elmina with local guides.
Ireland’s Heritage Journey Across the Emerald North spans Dublin, Belfast, Derry-Londonderry and Donegal before ending in Galway, with a stop at the Ulster American Folk Park to trace emigration stories and a day with a genealogist visiting the land and churches an ancestor might have known.
A Poland itinerary, Bearing Witness, is built for clients with Jewish roots and includes the Old Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw, Krakow’s Kazimierz Jewish Quarter, the Lodz Ghetto, a privately guided tour of Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow and a guided visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.
For more information, visit kensingtontours.com.
