Mariela came back from her last trip with a decision already made: to change the way VOi designs trips. We asked her about it, and this is what she answered, in her own words.
I have been working on myself for a while now: on the way I see things and the way I travel. Every trip I have taken in my life changed me, gave me something, transformed me. Not this one. This one did it in a different way, a complete way. And I think it is the most conscious thing I have ever learnt.
It was not chance. It was a decision: I decided this trip was going to have a different effect on me.
I designed a trip so I would be treated with kid gloves
I designed it that way on purpose. So I would be treated incredibly well, because there is nothing more beautiful than being treated well, good service, the small details. Nor is there a better place from which to be productive.
In the whole trip I did not meet a single person who spoke to me badly, who pulled a face, who served me grudgingly. That feels incredible. And it makes you want to do the same.
The coffee in Istanbul
When I got to Istanbul I had booked myself a very special hotel. The person who welcomed me did so with extraordinary kindness, and asked if I would like a coffee.
They served it to me. But the coffee came on a tray laid out with such care, such attention. “That is your coffee,” they said.
You could tell that coffee had been served with the intention of delighting. That the person was not going through a formality: they were doing their job so that someone else would feel good.
When I came back, the first thing I thought was: I want my team to feel the same thing.
The ticket is included, but it is not the valuable part
From then on I understood that trips cannot go on being sold thinking only and exclusively about a plane ticket, a hotel, some transfers and a handful of activities.
Of course all that is included. But the most valuable part of this work is something else: the mental, physical and emotional work of getting to know a client, of understanding what they are looking for, of understanding what they want to live, and of taking them there.
And of thinking, as well, about how each activity they will experience at the destination can transform them. Because we are not putting together itineraries: we are designing trips to feel.
A trip expands you in the direction you are already looking
Every place has something incredible to offer, and a trip expands along with you. If you love interiors, the trip expands you that way. If you love sales, the same. If spirituality interests you, likewise. In every possible direction, and in whichever one is yours.
On this last trip I saw many things I had to apply to myself and to the team. And I decided to change: to turn trips into something that helps people see beyond what they see around them, right here, where we are.
It is a way of growing that very few things can give us.
