Donna Sevilla

Am I fit enough to go gorilla trekking? How can I take my children to the Louvre and other great museums of Europe and not have them whining to leave after 15 minutes? We want to plan a trip to Alaska that will excite our children and grandchildren; do we have to cruise on one of the mega-ships? These are the kind of questions that I can answer from personal experience.  

Unlike sifting through thousands of listings and unvetted reviews on the internet and trying to decipher whether something is real or fake, or whether the reviewer is someone who is similar enough to you for their opinions to be meaningful, when I am your travel agent, you will be working with a real person who has been there and done that. I will take the time to understand your travel style and aspirations and will offer you choices and plan your itinerary based on your personal taste. 

You will also have the added advantages that come with my affiliation with Protravel International, a huge agency with enormous clout. During my years in the industry, I also have developed a network of personal contacts around the world. That means that typically when I send a client to a hotel, I call my contact there and request that my client be personally greeted and treated like a VIP.  

In addition, at most top hotels, my clients also enjoy Virtuoso or Travel Select value-added amenities such as a bottle of their favorite champagne upon arrival, complimentary breakfast and Wi-Fi, and sometimes food and spa credits. It also means I can sometimes do special things that few others can. A client once called me two weeks before the Milan furniture mart desperate to find a hotel room. The city was fully booked. A few phone calls later, my client had a room at the Four Seasons Hotel Milan.   

I did not set out to be a travel agent. I have a master's degree in library science, and but happily, the job market for librarians was nearly non-existent when I graduated, so I followed my passion and got into the travel industry. My librarian training has served me well when researching trips, and after 30 years in the travel industry, I cannot believe that I ever considered doing anything else. It is a point of pride that many clients have been with me for 25 and 30 years.  

I still am constantly learning and researching. In the past few years, I have visited castles and lodges in Scotland, checked out the latest shops and ateliers in Dublin, Paris, and Milan, and watched the Northern Lights in Iceland. My husband and I also took our granddaughter to Paris and our grandson to Costa Rica, visited India again, and traveled through Namibia. I have also taken multiple trips to the UK, France, and Italy. My all-time favorites are Antarctica and Eastern and Southern Africa, and always Paris.  

My travels give me first-hand knowledge and allow me to stay on top of trends and new offerings and I enjoy using my knowledge to craft personalized itineraries on all seven continents. Where would you like to go next?