Meet Whitney Wolff of Latitude Privé

Today we’d like to introduce you to Whitney Wolff.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m the founder of two companies, WhitWolff Media and Latitude Privé, and neither one was part of the original plan.
I trained as an interior designer. I went to school in Arizona State, graduated at the top of my class, and moved to Newport Beach to work on high-end custom homes, model homes, and projects in China. That’s where I developed my eye for luxury and detail. But it was 2010, the market was down, and growth was limited.

So I pivoted. Grubb & Ellis, a commercial real estate firm, offered me a marketing role even though I had never taken a marketing class. Design came naturally, and I taught myself the rest. When the company went through bankruptcy and let go of longtime staff, I was one of the people they kept. I used that year to master marketing, websites, and social media. After Newmark acquired us, I ran the marketing program for its national healthcare capital markets team for nearly seven years.

Corporate life taught me how to market at the highest level, but I wanted to build something of my own. I invested in a 10-day business intensive in Bali led by Kiersten Rich of The Blonde Abroad, came home, and resigned. I had no formal business plan. I simply told people what I could do, and the referrals never stopped. Eight years later, WhitWolff Media has grown entirely by word of mouth and has never needed its own website.

That work led me to BE Fit Modern Pilates, a client I believed in so much that I trained as an instructor, alongside grew the company from 1 to 18 studios. I’ve now taught for nearly five years, which gave me firsthand expertise in the wellness industry.

This past January I brought it all together and launched Latitude Privé, a luxury travel company affiliated with Fora. It began as a side venture and has grown faster than I ever expected.

My niche is wellness travel, from restorative hotel stays to spiritual journeys to fully curated retreats. I also design inspiration trips for businesses, corporate clients and retreats. Most recently I led a VP of interior design, an executive chef, and a development team through Oaxaca for two weeks to study the architecture and cuisine for their next project. Every part of my background, design, real estate, marketing, and wellness, goes into trips like that.

I’m based in Los Angeles and Orange County, and I curate travel globally. I’m proud to be a female founder building my second company, and to work alongside so many other female founders.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
For the most part, yes. I’ve been fortunate to choose who I work with, and when you love what you do, it rarely feels like work.

The challenges have been on the business side. I’m a creative, a go-getter, and a perfectionist (a true Capricorn), so the creative work has always come easily. Scaling was harder. I could have grown WhitWolff Media substantially, but I chose to keep it small and under my control. Looking back, building it with a partner might have taken it in a different direction, because there is only so much one person can grow alone.

Another hurdle has been advocating for my own value. Many of my clients are also friends, which is a gift, but it can make conversations about compensation harder to start. Learning to ask for what my work is worth, without a team or a mentor behind me, has been an ongoing lesson.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
My company is Latitude Privé, a luxury travel company I launched in January. In less than a year I’ve completed more than 100 bookings, with the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Portugal, Jamaica, South Korea, and Peru as my top destinations. I book everything from hotels, day tours, and activities to multi-day tours, homes and villas, travel insurance, and transportation.

What sets me apart is firsthand experience. I’ve traveled solo and with groups, at the highest level of luxury and well below it. I know what a trip feels like from every angle, and I use that to curate experiences my clients couldn’t find on their own. I’m also fearless about it. If I don’t know the answer, I ask, and I always figure it out.

My specialty is wellness travel, which is my passion and one of the fastest-growing areas of the industry. I recently attended a wellness training conference with our preferred partners and came away amazed by how many offerings there are around the world. Wellness can be designed for almost anyone, including corporate groups, multi-generational families, and individual travelers who simply want to come home feeling better than when they left.

Because I’m still in a growth phase, I plan every kind of travel for a wide range of clients. What they all have in common is that they were inspired by my own travels, and that’s what I’m most proud of.

What was your favorite childhood memory?
I have so many, but the one that connects most to what I do today goes back to when I was 10. My grandmother is Mexican, but she never spoke Spanish with us, so my father decided my brother and I needed to learn it another way. His solution was to move the family to Mexico, buy a house, and enroll us in an immersion school for a year. We lived in San Carlos, Mexico, a coastal city in the state of Sonora.

Looking back, that is one of my favorite times of my entire childhood, and I think it has a lot to do with where I am today. It’s why the world has never intimidated me, why I’m still fluent in Spanish, and why I’m so inspired by what other cultures can teach us about personal growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://latitudeprive.com
• Instagram: latitudeprivetravel

Image Credits
Chucho Potts
Whitney Wolff