Juan E. Chavez

How this started

I moved to Medellín in 2009.

In 2012 I threw a bachelor party for a friend from New York. Three grooms and twenty guys, twenty-three people, which in hindsight is an absurd way to start. Most people begin with four friends and a dinner reservation. I wasn't in the travel business at all. I just lived here and knew the city.

It went well, and it went the way these things go: his friends called, then their friends called. For a couple of years I was simply "Juan from Medellín" to a group of people back home.

By 2014 it had stopped being a favor and started being a company.

What I kept seeing on those early trips was the same gap. People arrived in a city they'd been warned about, with nobody here they trusted, so they either played it safe and saw nothing, or they trusted the wrong person and it went badly. Meanwhile most of what called itself luxury travel in Colombia was a tour package with better branding. The bar had been low for a long time.

Seventeen years in one city is the part of this that can't be shortcut. I know which street is fine at eleven at night and which one isn't. I know which villa owner answers the phone in December. I know which restaurant will actually hold a table for fourteen and which one will apologize when you arrive.

In 2014 I incorporated it properly in the United States: Med VIP International LLC, trading as Medellín VIP. The Colombian side came later: VIP Colombian Cultural Tour S.A.S., which holds the licenses to actually operate here, RNT 76491 as a tour operator and a second registration for vehicles.

That structure is deliberate, and it matters more than it sounds. You contract with a US company. A licensed Colombian operator runs your trip. You are not wiring money to a stranger in a country you've never been to, and the people meeting you at the airport are employed by a business that is registered, inspected and accountable where you're standing.

Twenty-three people was my first group. It's still, more or less, the size we're best at.

What we actually do

Our job is to remove every point of friction between you and the thing you came here for. Not to spend your money for you, you can do that. To know this place better than you ever could, and to execute it without you having to check.

I design a day the way I'd design a training block: intention, progression, a specific outcome. You don't put two high-intensity experiences back to back. A private lunch in El Poblado, then a neighborhood most visitors never see, at night: that order is deliberate. How you feel at the end of that day is the thing we're actually building.

Our clients don't grade on a curve. Someone who's done a private safari in Kenya or a villa on the Amalfi Coast walks in with that as the reference point. That's simply the standard we work to.

What I hold us to

A brand is only as strong as the weakest link in how it delivers. It doesn't matter how good the website looks if the driver is late or the villa doesn't match what was sold.

Every driver arriving early is a standard, not a coincidence. The airport runs, the grocery stop, the hotel-to-villa shuttle nobody thinks about: that's invisible work, and when it's right you don't notice it at all.

When we get it wrong I'd rather say so than explain it away. There are reviews on our Tripadvisor page where I've done exactly that. I write those replies myself.

Who does the work

On most trips you won't be dealing with me, and that's deliberate. Julio, our travel concierge, is usually the first person you'll talk to, and he shapes the trip with you before you land. Nicole, our logistics manager, makes sure every car, villa and reservation is exactly where it should be. On the ground it's Isaac, Margarita, Felipe, Stiven, Dayron and Caliche, the people guests name in reviews without being asked, which is the only credential that counts in this business.

You take care of the people who take care of your clients. That isn't a philosophy, it's an operating cost, and it's why the people on our team have been here for years.