Melanie Larson
Based in Geneva, Switzerland
English, Spanish, French (basic)
Melanie Larson
Ask me about
My Story
I came to travel advisory the way most people come to things they’re genuinely good at—through years of doing it for myself before it occurred to me to do it for others.
I’m a working professional, a wife, and a mother of two. Like most of my clients, I have a full life, a demanding career, and a finite number of days off each year. When time is your scarcest resource, a poorly planned trip isn’t just disappointing—it’s a waste of something you can’t get back.
I plan our family’s travel year every January. I study properties the way other people study restaurants. I know the difference between a hotel that photographs beautifully and one that actually delivers—and I’ve stayed at enough of both to tell them apart.
Aubé — named for the French word for dawn, that quiet moment before the day takes over—is the natural extension of that. A travel practice built around one idea: that how you spend your time away matters as much as where you go.
Travel Style
I am not interested in travel that just looks good. I am interested in travel that does something.
Sometimes that is stillness—a small property with extraordinary food and nothing on the agenda. Sometimes it is discovery—arriving somewhere new and letting a city surprise you, eating well, walking without a plan, letting a place reveal itself.
I move between nature and city, restoration and exploration, the remote and the urban. What stays constant is the quality and the intention.
Every trip starts with one question: what does this journey actually need to do? Everything else—the destination, the property, the pace—flows from there.
I tend toward properties that feel personal regardless of their size, experiences that feel considered rather than produced, and always enough white space for the moments you didn’t plan. Those are usually the ones you remember the longest.
Stay connected
Travel ideas (1)
Family Refined: Why Crete Is the Ultimate Greek Island for Every Generation
Few islands in the Mediterranean can match Crete for sheer range—of landscape, of food, of experience—and fewer still manage to deliver something genuinely meaningful to every kind of traveller without compromising the quality of the encounter. Young families, discerning couples, and multi-generational groups all find their version of it here, and all leave equally convinced they have discovered something the others haven’t. The food alone is worth the journey; the culture, expressed through its fishermen, village cooks, and small-batch producers, is worth staying for. It is the type of place people leave already thinking about when they might come back.
Family Refined: Why Crete Is the Ultimate Greek Island for Every Generation
Few islands in the Mediterranean can match Crete for sheer range—of landscape, of food, of experience—and fewer still manage to deliver something genuinely meaningful to every kind of traveller without compromising the quality of the encounter. Young families, discerning couples, and multi-generational groups all find their version of it here, and all leave equally convinced they have discovered something the others haven’t. The food alone is worth the journey; the culture, expressed through its fishermen, village cooks, and small-batch producers, is worth staying for. It is the type of place people leave already thinking about when they might come back.
Family Refined: Why Crete Is the Ultimate Greek Island for Every Generation
Few islands in the Mediterranean can match Crete for sheer range—of landscape, of food, of experience—and fewer still manage to deliver something genuinely meaningful to every kind of traveller without compromising the quality of the encounter. Young families, discerning couples, and multi-generational groups all find their version of it here, and all leave equally convinced they have discovered something the others haven’t. The food alone is worth the journey; the culture, expressed through its fishermen, village cooks, and small-batch producers, is worth staying for. It is the type of place people leave already thinking about when they might come back.
Family Refined: Why Crete Is the Ultimate Greek Island for Every Generation
Few islands in the Mediterranean can match Crete for sheer range—of landscape, of food, of experience—and fewer still manage to deliver something genuinely meaningful to every kind of traveller without compromising the quality of the encounter. Young families, discerning couples, and multi-generational groups all find their version of it here, and all leave equally convinced they have discovered something the others haven’t. The food alone is worth the journey; the culture, expressed through its fishermen, village cooks, and small-batch producers, is worth staying for. It is the type of place people leave already thinking about when they might come back.
Travel photos
