South America & Caribbean
To create your ideal luxury holiday, travel specialists have to be just that. Specialists.
What began as two friends with successful careers in finance and a penchant for lavish adventures at under-the-radar places, has become South America’s go-to luxury travel company. In 2003, founders Paul Irvine and Henry Madden found themselves longing for a life beyond the corner office. During a holiday in Brazil they realised that existing South American travel companies had a huge blind spot. Traditional travel agents simply weren’t catering to the type of traveller who, like themselves and their city peers, were looking for a high level of service and a degree of luxury, but were also yearning to get off the beaten track. Tourists on “luxury” package tours were invariably being funnelled in to just a handful of soulless international resorts, overlooking the huge potential of the region. They combined this insight with their existing business skills to create South America’s first experience-led luxury travel company.
They went back to London, and bid farewell to friends and family, “It felt like we were leaving on a steamer,” says Paul, “we were determined to make it work and we weren’t going to stop until we did.” They instinctively knew that the best place to be was on the ground, so they could be ahead of the curve, and on hand to personally create impromptu surprises and solve unexpected issues. For the next twelve months, they hired boats and seaplanes, got lost in the jungle, washed up on secluded beaches and discovered bijou 9-room pousadas. The field work paid off and word-of-mouth led to an early mention in Vogue.
Today Dehouche is an industry leader and consults the world’s leading luxury resort groups looking to enter South America. The company has expanded its team, united by a philosophy of local immersion and a policy of continuously testing, trying, and re-visiting to create experiences that are impossible to create from afar. After all, Paul and Henry didn’t leave the corporate world to offer a corporate experience. Dehouche’s aim is simple: To create unparalleled holidays for our clients, that are meticulously designed with the flexibility to change as inspiration strikes. We want our clients to experience the region with the same sense of wonder as we did, on that very first trip.
Just wanted to say a huge thank you for organizing the most wonderful holiday in Argentina. We had an amazing time. We loved it all – Salta, Cafayate, Cachi, Rincon del Socorro, Iguazu and Buenos Aires. Every place we stayed in was brilliant and we were so well looked after. You even arranged for children to come out and cheer at us from the side of the road when we were making our way from Salta airport to the hotel (actually that might have been the Dakar rally drivers behind us…). The guides were so interesting and professional and such good company – it really made our trip special. We loved Facundo and the wonderful Brazilian guide in Iguazu and Gabriel in Buenos Aires – we could not have wished for better people to show us around. The light aircraft trip from Rincon del Socorro to Posadas was magical – thank you so much for sorting that out. You re-arranged our trip perfectly when there was a flight delay. Everything worked like clockwork – so much so that we came to take it completely for granted, consequently it was a bit of a shock arriving back home.
Mary Rose, United Kingdom
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