I grew up in hotels.
My grandfather was an art director, painter and photographer. My grandmother designed costumes for theatre. My father worked in hospitality. My mother painted and wrote for pleasure. It was a creative upbringing.The career that followed began in London then evolved from PR into Creative Direction, and now with a different pace of life in Spain, I’m a copywriter and travel journalist.
London
I started in tech, as marketing manager and later country manager for LaCie, the innovative French company now owned by Seagate Technology. It was that time when the internet was emerging, dial-up modems were normal, and small companies often shared a single email address. Yet things were moving at lightning speed. It was a great time to be in business. So inspiring.
LaCie was the first backer of my own PR and creative agency. Eleven years of running it, working with Macromedia and a roster of US tech firms preparing for IPO or sale, meant regular flights to California and Colorado. The UK had emerged as a modern free-market economy and US firms were basing themselves in London as their entry point into Europe.They were exciting times.
A US incentive travel group then acquired our small PR and creative agency, and I joined their European leadership as Creative Director.
Spain, unexpectedly
I’d loved the Mediterranean for years, but Andalucía was a place I barely knew Seville and Granada, in my twenties. Then the Costa del Sol for a winter escape. Yet this country I’d dipped into a few times became somewhere I fell in love with too. I renovated a cortijo in the hills of Málaga province. The valley around the house is full of oak, olive and almond trees, and the house is where I now write.
The Costa del Sol of Andalucía has since re-emerged as one of Europe’s most exciting and innovative hospitality destinations, which is a coincidence I have wholeheartedly embraced
The writing followed
The travel writing started in Spain. Documenting my own travels turned into something other people wanted to read. SUR in English took me on as Contributing Travel Editor, which became years of monthly destination features and insider guides. The Luxury Editor became my main editorial home. Then separate commissions for UK titles including The Telegraph, Sotogrande Life and Anthology Magazine, among others, as well as the opportunity to edit magazines such as Eden Life, for the Oetker Collection of luxury hotels, and TOUT World of Luxury, a bilingual luxury lifestyle publication.
Off the page
The travel I do for myself is sometimes the opposite of what I write about for hotels: family-run places, local food, long walks in the mountains. Other times not.
Now
I work with luxury hospitality brands across the full guest journey, from pre-opening positioning and in-room copy to launch activations and longer reads. The roster includes Puente Romano Marbella, Nobu Hotels, Rosewood Hotels and others.
I’ve sat on all sides of a marketing brief, as the in-house client, as the agency lead, as the journalist receiving the press release, and as the guest the hotel is trying to build loyalty with.