Meet the team

I am Argentine and grew up near the sea, in a city shaped by the rhythm of seasonal tourism: intense summers, full of life and movement, and quieter winters, when the city returned to those who actually lived there. I learned early on that the same place can change completely depending on who is looking at it and at what point it is inhabited.

From a young age I also understood what it means to live somewhere that is often perceived as a place of passage. A space that, at certain moments, overflows to meet a specific and temporary need. In Mar del Plata, my city, that translated into beach days, shows on the promenade or in the square, dinners at the port, the theatre revue. An intense but brief way of being, very focused on immediate enjoyment.

With the arrival of high season, that rhythm brought other things too: crowds, pressure on the environment, saturated services and, little by little, a certain unease among those who sustain the city all year round. Even as a child, that contrast already hinted that not all ways of travelling — or of inhabiting a place — have the same impact

What does it really mean to visit a place? Is it possible to do so without passing through it, without reducing it to a consumer experience, without leaving a mark that unsettles what already exists?

In an attempt to answer that, I decided to study tourism.

Years later, travelling through Asia, something finally fell into place. Far from the temples, monuments and idyllic beaches — places that, driven by blogs, guides like Lonely Planet or the Facebook forums of the time, end up being known by everyone and, over time, overcrowded — I discovered another way of travelling. It appeared in the unexpected. In the people who crossed your path without any planning. In the person who invites you to a local wedding. In the one who approaches out of curiosity, asks where you are from and ends up opening the door of their home. In the one who, finding you lost on the Bangkok metro, draws you a map on paper and tells you to ignore Google Maps and follow those directions instead.

What makes a journey memorable is not the place turned into an image, but the bond you build with it.

Hospitality, shared knowledge, what lies outside what was planned and yet ends up giving meaning to everything else. Even — and despite — that constant impulse to see it all, to miss nothing.

A few years ago I moved to Barcelona and began working at a corporate travel company. It was an important period of learning, but it also allowed me to see clearly the distance between that model of tourism and the way I understood I could contribute to the sector — from my own experience and from what a city like Barcelona lives in the face of tourism.

Barcelona gave shape to all of this. It is a living, complex city full of stories, but also deeply strained by tourist pressure, with real consequences for things like access to housing, the balance of neighbourhoods and the relationship between those who arrive and those who inhabit it. Observing that tension up close led me to question my own place within this sector and what responsibility those of us who are part of it must take on.

Llaura was born from there. Not as a perfect solution, but as an honest attempt to do things differently.

And in that gesture — of how we look at and inhabit a place — we also decide what kind of tourism we are building.