There's a beautiful world out there and NUBA can help show you it.
Courtesy: NUBA
Champagne inside the Botero family’s Mexico City home... a museum dinner with an artist who helps you paint the tablecloth, which you then take home... a conversation in Japan that sticks with you long after the flight back.
Your next vacation could have quite the storyline.
That’s the thinking behind NUBA, the luxury travel company with Spanish roots and a Miami base connecting South Floridians to customized journeys worldwide. Browardist caught up with Carolita Urrestarazu, its Miami-based head of business development for the USA, to talk big trips, personal connections and what travelers want now.
With over 30 years in business, NUBA designs itineraries around individual interests, coordinating hotels, transportation, dining and private experiences. Its Shapes by NUBA collection focuses on art, wellness and gastronomy.
Urrestarazu brings a decade of experience at Sereno Hotels, working with properties in Lake Como and St. Barths. She says NUBA’s U.S. operation encompasses approximately 25 people, while Mexico has 130 advisors supported by dedicated cruise, flight and product teams. The company also runs its own destination operations in Spain and Mexico.
The advantage for travelers? Someone in that network has likely walked the hotel corridors, met the guide and figured out which experience deserves your precious vacation days.
“If you talk to a NUBA person, if I haven't been in that place, there's a colleague that has been,” Urrestarazu says.
That knowledge can open some remarkable doors. During a recent Mexico City visit, she joined clients inside the home of a son of artist Fernando Botero, who shared champagne, family photographs and personal stories while showing his father’s artwork.
In Spain, she describes arranging private museum dinners with artists and visits to wineries generally closed to the public, where owners share their family histories. In Japan, a memorable cultural encounter sparked an hour-long conversation about daily life. Another client’s extended Asian journey included temple lodging and time living among villagers.
Those experiences illustrate her broader point... luxury depends on the traveler.
“Is luxury chandeliers and gold? Is luxury to be in a remote island where no one goes or in the middle of nature? It doesn't need to be super expensive,” she says.
NUBA specializes in the luxury market, with an initial conversation helping determine whether a trip fits its expertise and which designer should handle it.
As for what’s catching travelers’ attention, Urrestarazu sees interest in cooler summer destinations, off-season visits, fewer scheduled stops and family trips built around time together. Japan, China and destinations across Africa are generating interest, she says, alongside luxury hospitality brands’ expansion into boats and trains.
“People are very well traveled,” she says. “We have clients that travel through 200 days a year, so we need to keep up all the time.”
For anyone still deciding where to go, NUBA’s new editorial book, NOMAD, offers inspiration through destinations, art, food and conversations with creative figures.
Consider it a nudge to finally turn that someday trip into a calendar entry, y’all. So, get moving and get traveling.
