Before I planned trips for a living, I spent 14 years solving problems for a living. Here's how that ended up shaping the way I travel, and the way I plan your trip.
An Engineer's Approach to Travel Design
about
GarciaGarcia is for travelers who want to actually get to know a place: its traditions, the ingredients that define its food, the terroir of its wine, the history that shaped it. We build in the time to move at the pace of someone who lives there, not someone passing through. Just as much of the work is getting to know you: what you actually want out of a trip, the aesthetic you're drawn to, the memory you're hoping to bring home. Not the version of a destination that shows up on every top-ten list, or the one an algorithm would generate, but the one that's actually right for you. The longer we work together, the sharper that picture gets.
Who We Are
For curious travelers who want to understand a place, not just see it.
GarciaGarcia is an affiliate of Embark Beyond
a Virtuoso agency that's boutique in size but carries outsized weight with hotels and suppliers worldwide
Our preferred relationships run from the major international luxury brands like Rosewood, Four Seasons or Capella, to the small, independent collections like Leading Hotels of the World, Relais & Châteaux or Small Luxury Hotels, where so many of the best family-run properties live. A reservation that comes through us arrives with context: who you are, why you're there, what the trip actually means. They know your name, not just the card you booked with. It's the reason our guests get added to the hotel's VIP list, not just booked into a room. That kind of standing isn't something you can create for yourself. It has to come from somewhere, and for our clients, it comes from us.
Our Values
Founder & Travel Advisor
I grew up in Barcelona, speaking Spanish and Catalan at home. Every summer, my parents took me somewhere new in Europe, and eventually further afield. That's where the curiosity started, well before it was anything I thought of as a career.
I trained as an engineer in Barcelona, then moved to the U.S. for graduate school at MIT, and spent the next fourteen years in institutional finance at Bank of America. Most of that time was spent managing relationships with investors across Latin America and the Caribbean, a region I came to love through years of traveling there for work. None of that was travel planning, but all of it turned out to be useful for it: the discipline, the comfort with unfamiliar places, the habit of figuring out how a destination actually works. GarciaGarcia is what happened when I stopped keeping that curiosity as a hobby.
Meet Ruben Garcia
Transfers, sequencing, timing, the pieces that could go wrong get solved in advance, so the only thing you actually experience is the trip itself.
Handled Before You Notice It
A trip can put you in the middle of how a place actually lives, its markets, its meals, its rhythms, without asking you to give up an expert guide, a hotel with top-notch service, or a bed you're glad to come back to.
You Don't Have to Choose
You get access to the best a destination has to offer, including experiences that aren't available to the public, and I make sure every one of them is worth what you're paying for it.
I Protect the Value of Your Investment
WSET Level 2 certified. Wine is one of the few subjects I'll happily talk about longer than anyone asked.
Two master's degrees, one in telecommunications engineering from Barcelona, the other from MIT's School of Engineering.
A serious points-and-miles enthusiast. The best first-class cabins are basically five-star hotels with wings, and I've made a hobby of trying them, caviar and champagne included.
More than 80 countries and counting, from the ones clients ask for most (Italy, France, Japan) to the ones they usually don't (Bhutan, Bolivia, Turkmenistan).
