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Discover the finest hotels and journeys in Mexico, Central America, and South America


About Us - Luxury Latin America

Luxury Latin America is the #1 website for luxury travel in South America, Central America, and Mexico.

We offer candid and detailed reviews of the most luxurious hotels and resorts in Latin America, from Mexico down through the tip of Tierra del Fuego. We also feature articles based on the best trips in the region, tours and adventure excursions that are a step above the standard fare experienced by most holiday tourists. And we cover vacation and retirement home luxury real estate developments in the Americas.

You can see more about traffic and our upscale, frequent-traveler readers here in our Media Kit. Our parent company is AL Centro Media, registered in the state of Florida and based on Tampa Bay. You can find information on how to get in touch with us on the Contact page. We are physically based in Mexico, however, and our staffers and contributors live throughout the Americas.

All hotel reviews, tour stories, and real estate features are written by seasoned travel writers who have inspected the properties and experienced the trips first-hand. We don't believe in praising places from behind a desk in a faraway city without seeing if the hotel or tour really lives up to the promises.

luxury travel website

While the luxury end of the travel spectrum is well-covered by magazines, none concentrate on this vibrant emerging section of the globe. Also, most upscale travel magazines appear to be far more focused on pleasing advertisers and playing it safe than on giving accurate and timely information on destinations and hotels. They typically praise every new property and "what's hot" destination with a mountain of flattery. They are under tremendous pressure to woo and retain deep-pocketed advertisers (who don't take kindly to negative coverage). With lead times of four to six months, they are also often praising new properties nobody has set foot in physically.

Our Luxury Hotel Reviews

We don't operate like that. All hotel reviews are based on first-hand inspections from expert writers who know a world-class hotel from a routine cookie-cutter one that puts up a good front. They inspect the place floor by floor and and provide an honest evaluation of how it stacks up.

Around the world, titles such as "deluxe" or "5-star" have become so diluted that they are meaningless. We separate the truly great luxury hotels from the ones that say "Five Stars" but are nothing close.

Hotels cannot pay to be a part of Luxury Latin America: all hotels and resorts are chosen by the editorial team in consultation with the on-the-ground writer, based on real quality and service. Although we feature advertising, we are not a booking service. We advise you which hotels are worth your stay, but have no stake in which ones you choose.

Our Luxury Tour Features

For destination and tour features, nobody here is writing a travel story based on a press release: if we can't get there ourselves and experience it first-hand, we don't write about it. We rate how tours stack up against others we have experienced in Asia, Europe, Africa, and North America. Our travel features focus on trips that are extraordinary, exclusive, or have an especially strong focus on service.

We also report on Luxury Real Estate in Latin America, with detailed reports on quality areas for vacation or retirement homes.

We hope you like what you see and will recommend us to other upscale travelers you know. If you have a comment or suggestion, or wish to reach our readers through advertising or a promotion, please see the Contact page for info on how to get in touch with us. For ongoing news and updates on luxury travel in Latin America, see the Luxury Latin America Blog.

Want to get your message in front of our well-traveled, upscale readers? See our Media Kit and advertising rates. With a "soft launch" in 2007 and full coverage of luxury travel in the Americas since 2008, we've staked out our spot as the leading resource on luxury travel in the Americas.

The Team Members of Luxury Latin America


Editor Timothy ScottEditor Timothy Scott founded this online magazine in the late '00s and is responsible for choosing the editorial direction and writing most of the blog posts. He has been reviewing hotels and writing feature stories for more than 25 years, first for trade publications and later for a variety of consumer magazines and travel websites. He is doing most of the posts on our Twitter account and blog.

He has spent time in Latin America every year since the founding, including multiple trips to different areas of most of the nations we cover. He has been invited to speak at multiple conferences, including the New York Times Travel Show and Adventure Travel Mexico as a Latin America travel expert. After traveling the world for years and living in New York City, Nashville, and Tampa, his home base is now a home he owns in central Mexico.

Lydia CareyAssociate Editor Lydia Carey handles the editing and posting of hotel reviews, feature stories, and real estate round-ups posted on the online magazine and is a regular contributor. She occasionally posts shots from her research trips to the Instagram feed.

She is also a freelance writer, author, and translator based out of Mexico City. She has worked as an editor and writer for various publications such as Delta Sky magazine, Meal Magazine, National Geographic Travel, Mexico News Daily, Culinary Backstreets and Hemishperes magazine. She has been blogging and writing in Mexico for more than a decade. Lydia is the the author of Mexico City Streets: La Roma. See more of her published work online.

Donna LeffelAdvertising Director Donna Leffel graduated from Tulane in New Orleans and worked for a music label in New York City before spending several years traveling around the world. She's a certified personal trainer and Pilates instructor, but spends much of her time interfacing with marketing partners of Luxury Latin America and the 360 Degree Travel Network content marketing agency of travel bloggers and online magazines.

Donna has lived in several U.S. states and countries on three continents and has spent stretches of time in multiple countries in Latin America. She is now an empty nest expat based in Mexico.

Paty RamosSocial Media Director Paty Ramos posts our photos and articles on various social networks and coordinates that aspect of our campaigns with various marketing partners. She previously worked as a marketer for The Western Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESO) in Guadalajara, Mexico and worked at IBM as US General Business Accounts Receivable Representative before studying to earn a certificate in social media for business at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver, Canada.

She has been with Luxury Latin America since 2015 and also handles campaigns for many travel and food bloggers. She is based in Puerto Vallarta.

Alina LeffelContributing Editor Alina Leffel is a writer and content creator specializing in entertainment media and content, both fiction and not. She self-published her first novel at 16 years old and since then graduated with a bachelor's degree in Creative Writing for Entertainment from Full Sail University in Florida. She runs a popular entertainment YouTube channel and has worked for Disney, REMX, Tampa Bay Comic Con, and the Atlanta Braves, as well as writing and doing video editing for several high-profile blogs.

Who writes for us? You can see a short bio for each member of our team of well-traveled writers on the Luxury Latin America Contributors page.