I’ve been travelling
since before it
was a lifestyle. Since 1978,
to be precise.

In 1978, when I was eight years old, my family travelled to Rawalpindi. I remember a colourful bus climbing into the foothills of the Himalaya, the drop on one side of the road vertiginous and vast. Looking over that edge made me feel something I had no word for yet. Alive, I suppose. That feeling never left.

In December 1992 I flew to Cancún alone and spent months moving through Mexico and Central America. My guide was a thick handbook, dense with text, not a single photograph. Information came from fellow travellers at guesthouses and border crossings: where are you coming from, what did you find. At the Belize-Guatemala border I waited for a chicken bus to fill before it would leave. Three adults on a bench built for two American schoolchildren, one cheek on the seat and the other hanging over the edge.

I studied Cultural Studies and Spanish at the University of Amsterdam, with a focus on cultural history, literature and how art, politics and society shape the world we move through. Alongside that, journalism theory, which taught me to look carefully and write precisely. To describe what I see, not just record it. That combination is still how I approach every destination I visit.

Before leading groups I walked the Inca Trail myself. Four days above 4,000 metres, more physically demanding than anything I thought I was capable of. Arriving at Machu Picchu in the early morning, having earned it with your legs, is not something you forget. It taught me that discomfort and reward are often the same journey, seen from different ends.

After that I worked in Peru and Ecuador as a travel guide, leading Dutch groups through the region. Then I came home, built a family, and kept going. When my daughter Nina was six months old she was already on a plane to Hong Kong. A month on Bali. At four she was in Thailand, crossing between boats at sea. She was lifted over the water and passed from one crew to another like a small, very calm parcel.

My son Daniel flew to Mallorca at three months, the Cote d’Azur at six, Dubai at nine. Later I took both children to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Eilat, across the border into Jordan, through Aqaba to Petra, back through Dahab. Not on a package tour. Figuring it out as we went.

I like a little friction. The moments that are not perfectly smooth are often the ones that stay with you. This is not what I bring to my clients. For them I remove every edge that does not need to be there. But it is why I understand travel at a level that goes beyond reading hotel reviews.

I don’t walk into a hotel and see a room. I see light. How it falls at 7am, which direction the windows face, what the shadows do by afternoon. I notice the routing: how you move through a lobby, whether the design creates arrival or just fills space. I feel the atmosphere before I assess the amenities.

Cultural history and journalism trained me to ask: who does this place belong to? Who feels at home here, and who doesn’t? I sit in lobbies and restaurants and markets with that question. It is what I bring to every trip I plan. I match people to places the way a good editor matches a story to a reader.

I attend ILTM Cannes and other invitation-only travel trade events each year. I conduct site inspections. I maintain preferred relationships with the world’s leading hotel collections, from Small Luxury Hotels and Leading Hotels of the World to handpicked independents that belong in the same conversation.

I work in Dutch, English, Spanish, German and French. Which means I can navigate the world’s best properties in the language they think in, and advocate for my clients with the fluency that makes a difference when it matters.

I work with a small number of clients at a time. Every trip begins with a conversation. Because the brief is never really the brief. The right trip lives somewhere beneath the first thing you tell me you want.