Italy Beyond the Obvious was born after more than a decade of creating custom Italy trips for friends and family on the side.
Here’s our story.
1990 Founder and Owner Madeline Jhawar spent a year in Monza, Italy as an AFS Exchange Student
1995 - 97 Madeline worked as a guide for Butterfield & Robinson, leading week-long hiking and biking trips in Italy.
2000 - 2002 Madeline moved back to Milan as an expat for Arrow Electronics, in the role of southern Europe operations manager
2008 After continuing to help friends and family with Italy trips (and many hours on TripAdvisor forums, for fun) Madeline took the plunge. We bought the URL, put up fees, and started spreading the word. At first, there was a trickle, and then more requests starting coming.
2011 Now working full-time hours at Italy Beyond the Obvious, we increased fees to quell demand.
2012 With more demand than we could handle, we increased fees once again.
2013 For the third year in a row, we increased fees to quell demand.
2014 With pricing catering solidly to the luxury travel market yet still with more demand than Madeline could handle on her own, Claudia Marchesi starts working at Italy Beyond the Obvious.
2015 - 17 We have refined operational processes and optimized business tools, all while maintaining a high quality of experience for our travelers.
We continue to create highly personalized trips of a lifetime for our clients, and are grateful every single day to be doing work that we love.
