Meet Michelle Summerville
LOCAL FOREIGNER’S TEAM OF INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS
This post is part of our series celebrating our Independent Contractors and Hosting Program. The Local Foreigner's Hosting Program provides a platform of systems and support for independent travel advisors.
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endless summer
Michelle Summerville is up front: “I didn’t get my first passport until I was 23. Isn’t that crazy? I got it for a trip to Barcelona, and I was hooked from the first moments. All those people spilling out of restaurants, the sun setting so late at night, the buzzing plaças. It was basically game over from then on.” Summer in Europe is easy to love, but Michelle upped the difficulty quickly once she caught the travel bug. “I traveled a lot before I had kids, and then I had three of them (now 12, 8, and 5) – and I kept traveling the whole time. When the older two were 3 and 7, we went to Cambodia and Vietnam, and when the youngest was 9 months, we went to Thailand and Laos. People would tell me I was crazy to put them on those long-haul flights, but they’re easy. You just put them on planes, and they get used to it early.”
“I got my first passport for a trip to Barcelona, and I was hooked from the first moments. All those people spilling out of restaurants, the sun setting so late at night, the buzzing plaças. It was basically game over from then on.”
-Michelle Summerville
creative outlet
But that’s all getting ahead of the story – something that’s easy to do when you’re trying to keep up with Michelle’s breakneck pace. “I grew up on Long Island and I came to New York to go to NYU and to be a singer/songwriter. Along the way, I got hooked into a job in finance, and I found myself planning my boss’s epic travels – landing a helicopter in the Gobi Desert, planning expeditions to the Arctic Circle. I was doing all the research on these trips for years, and eventually it occurred to me to formalize the arrangement. I joined a host agency, and he was my first client. Pretty quickly after that, word spread across the floor, and I was handling everyone’s travel, ducking into conference rooms to make calls to suppliers on the other side of the world. After two years of working full time in finance and running Tribeca Traveler full time on the side, I made the jump to prioritizing this career.”
Make it Spicy
Local Foreigner advisors pride themselves on recommending experiences they have personally vetted, but Michelle is particularly obsessive on this front. “I am very deliberate about every single recommendation, every activity – if we’re chartering a boat, which boat is best? Is it the boat the hotel recommends, or an independent boat booked through a local supplier? Who has the fluffiest towels, the best catering?” That level of specificity is especially apparent when you get her started talking about food. “You can get anything you want in New York, so the last thing I want to do is go somewhere and eat poorly. I will travel an hour in the wrong direction for a great restaurant. And if something promises spice, I want real spice – I was just in Canouan, let me tell you, the scotch bonnets they have there are no joke – I couldn’t feel my lips.”
This thoroughness and personalization has earned her a loyal client base, for whom she’s generally planning 5+ trips a year. “My clients are long-term; it’s not a churn-and-burn relationship. My favorite types of clients have great taste, but they’re also trusting – they love a day on a boat where they pull up to a local oyster farm, where the oysters are pulled right from the water, shucked immediately, dressed with a squeeze of lemon juice, and handed right over. I am always on the lookout for hidden gems – when I travel, I am always out, exploring and taking notes. You will not catch me ordering room service and having a quiet night in the hotel.”
“If we’re chartering a boat, I want to know which boat is best? Is it the boat the hotel recommends, or an independent boat booked through a local supplier? Who has the fluffiest towels, the best catering?”
Group effort
She’s found a community of like-minded obsessives at the Local Foreigner. “Long before I got into the industry, I admired the Local Foreigner brand. I recognized that the founders had great taste and appreciated the nuances of high-end travel, which has always been what I strive to do – quality over quantity, no filler, and keeping up to date with what is actually exciting and relevant within the industry. I came to Local Foreigner for the people, the intel, the relationships, the collaboration. Travel came into my life as a creative outlet when I was working in a black and white industry; Local Foreigner’s systems and team let me continue to grow the potential of what I can create for my clients.”