Our Background

mcube Travel Boutique, conceived by Milo Guastamacchia and Michele Bellabarba, is a recently born travel advisor and arranger. This travel consulting company, specialized in tailor-made travel solutions in Asia, directs its marketing efforts out of its London base and benefits from the knowledge of a travel expert with a deep knowledge of Asian destinations.

After years in the financial industry, Milo has decided to transfer to the travel industry, which has been a life-long passion of his, his organizational skills, attention to detail and excellence in delivering customized solutions to clients. He travelled far and wide in Southeast Asia, thus acquiring the necessary local knowledge and establishing the required local partnerships to be able to advise and implement first-class travel solutions meticulously studied to fit the needs and interests of our clients. Michele, an Economics graduate with a passion for theatre and acting and employed for years in the financial industry, is in charge of client relations and marketing from our London headquarters.

Together Milo and Michele have conceived this small travel company with the aim of allowing you to experience Asia the way it can never be experienced as part of a standard package tour, with minute attention to quality, serving you the way you deserve and building around you the most suitable travel solution.

 

Biography of the founders

 

Michele Bellabarba

Born in Roma in 1976, Michele grew up in his native country until his early years of university and in 1998 he moved to Sweden, where he finished his studies in Economics. After his graduation, Michele started working in US and Europe for different international and public institutions until he finally moved to London in 2003 to join a renowned international financial firm. With a deep passion for acting and travelling, Michele lends his communication and networking skills to the service of mcube.

 

 

 

 

 

Milo Guastamacchia

Born in Milano in 1979, Milo grew up and lived near Milano until 1998, when he moved to Torino and then Brighton to pursue his university career in Engineering and Business. After graduation in 2002, Milo worked first in Geneva and then in London for a well known international financial firm, where he took on various operational and sales roles. At the beginning of 2008 Milo co-founded with Michele Bellabarba Mcube Ltd. and since then moved to Southeast Asia to pursue his new dream endeavour.

 

 

 

 

 

Why We Are Different

Passionate About (Your) Travel

Passion for travelling… Yes, we do love travelling to relax and unwind and especially to learn more about the world and other cultures. We truly believe that the more we learn about different people and their habits, the more we learn about ourselves, giving new perspectives to the cultural background we have grown up with. This is indeed the most precious feeling we want to share and we believe the best way to do this is by offering a competent and personalised advice.

Competence and knowledge for us does not mean just having read or heard about a place, but having been there in person and in some instances also living there, knowing how to get off the beaten track, having local contacts that make the difference and working with the right service providers who are the best in what they do; this is why our travel expert Milo has decided for part of the year to be based in Southeast Asia, indeed the part of the world that we will be advising you on.

Milo has travelled almost everywhere in Southeast Asia, visiting all the best hotels, experiencing first hand the greatest majority of tours and activities which he will propose to you, and also selecting the best ground handlers in each of the countries covered. In fact, Milo will directly interact with you, studying the best personalised travel solution for your holiday and using the best local agents to provide you, if needed, with competent university-educated tour guides, private transport, advice on the best restaurants and spas and a range of customised activities and sights of superior quality for each location. You will not be able to experience any of this with the usual package tours.

Our travel and lifestyle solutions are indeed designed to let you enjoy the discovery in comfort by recommending the best possible accommodation for your stay. We strongly believe that an outstanding hotel where you can sleep comfortably and be pampered after an active day is the best way to enjoy the adventure instead of only withstanding it.

 

Personalised Travel Solutions (as the only way of truly travelling)

First and foremost we are travellers like you, inquisitive people who have always felt that travelling in a big group as part of a package tour limits our range of action and our possibility to really enjoy the best and the truest experience that a location could offer.

Most of the time, we did not have a choice. We had to go for a standard tour, even when it did not entirely match our expectations, simply because it was the best available option for travelling to an unknown location. After all, we did not know anybody who not only had travelled extensively to our desired destination, visited all the best hotels and resorts and seen the greatest majority of the best attractions these countries had to offer, but who could also spend time to understand what we wanted from our holiday and to come up with a personalized travel solution matching exactly our expectations.

That is why we have decided to go a step further and make customisation of travel solutions our profession.

Whether you are travelling for a much-needed brake from months of hard work or with a specific purpose or interest, you deserve to experience the trip of a lifetime personalized for you by your travel consultant. Whether you are looking for simple advice on where to go and what to do in Asia or for help with managing all your hotel reservations and transfers or with designing and managing from A to Z your travel to this fascinating and exotic destination, mcube Travel Boutique is here to serve you. Our groups can be as small as one person and our travel solutions can include special interest tours, weddings, honeymoons, cultural exchanges, voluntary projects and, when we can, even help with opening doors that would otherwise be closed.

 

(Small) Size Matters

By now you have understood that we are not here to offer any standard tour that the big established tour operators already propose. Each person is unique and so are our travel solutions, carefully studied to suit your personality, interests and expectations. Being deliberately a small organisation and having only a few clients to look after, we can afford to spend as much time as needed to make sure you get exactly the holiday you want and obtain an accurate picture of what you should expect from it.

We are also here not just to match your expectations, but also to amaze you and make sure that you will be delighted with your holiday experience.

Big established tour operators simply cannot afford to do this, as they are limited by their size and consequently by the fact that their profitability targets do not allow them to spend much time talking to you and personalizing your travel to the extent we can. After all, why spend time customising travel solutions for a few individuals when they can be much more profitable by offering standardised tours to big groups? And even if they wanted to, would you want to be advised on your holiday by someone that has potentially never visited the destinations and accommodation that he or she is recommending to you? We take an entirely different approach, it is precision work that not only requires skill and local knowledge, but also the passion to patiently and carefully spend time with each of our clients to study every single detail for a totally personalised trip.

 

(Of course) Responsible and Sustainable Travelling

For mcube Travel Boutique there is actually no other way of travelling than responsible and sustainable travelling. We could not even envisage promoting itineraries and activities that do not generate economic benefits for local people, make positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage embracing diversity and which are culturally sensitive and encourage respect between tourists and hosts. For us, responsible tourism is not another form of niche tourism or a marketing move to attract socially and environmentally aware travellers, it is simply the only way, the foundation upon which we conduct our business in those countries we offers travel arrangements to.

And responsible travelling also means a better experience and a better product to travellers, enabling them to come closer to the real living heritage and natural beauties of the countries they visit and preserving it for years to come. In addition to being correct from an ethical point of view, it goes without saying that being responsible and sustainable is the right path to take to a superior travel experience. But responsibility does not only lie with the tour operators, we would ask individual travellers to take responsibility for their actions; this is the reason why in our personalized travel documentation we will advise you with a list of simple measures you can take to be more socially and environmentally aware.

 

Our Marketing Partners