Kevin & Melina · Uluru, Australia
About Melina & Kevin, Founders of Blueprint Travelers
Melina and Kevin have personally traveled to every destination on this site. First-hand guides for Japan, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand, built for people who travel with intention.
More research than a travel blog. More personality than a guidebook.
We started Blueprint Travelers because we couldn’t find the guide we actually wanted. Not a list of the top ten things to do in a city. Not a spreadsheet of every hotel in a region. Something in between, written by people who had genuinely been there, cared about the food and the culture, and understood that most travelers don’t have unlimited time.
Every destination on this site is somewhere Kevin and Melina have personally spent time. We’ve eaten at those restaurants, hiked those trails, stayed in those places, and spoken to locals to find what doesn’t make it into any guide. We cover Japan, Latin America, Oceania and Australia because those are the regions we know best. We don’t write about places we haven’t been.
We travel comfortably. Not budget backpacking, not ultra-luxury. We spend where it genuinely adds to the experience and save where it doesn’t. If a $600 hotel is just a hotel, we’ll tell you. If a local market breakfast at $4 is the best meal of your trip, we’ll tell you that too.
Meet Melina
I grew up in an international family, moving between Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Living in Honduras and Italy taught me something that a week-long trip rarely does: the culture of a place lives in the everyday, not the highlights. The morning coffee ritual, the neighborhood that locals actually go to, the restaurant that nobody outside the city has heard of. That’s what I’ve always looked for when I travel, and it’s what I try to build into every guide I write.
My professional background is in experience strategy and interior design. In plain terms, that means I spent years thinking about how people move through spaces and what makes an experience feel right. Applied to travel, it shapes how I structure itineraries, which details I flag, and how I think about the difference between a good trip and a trip that stays with you.
I’ve personally traveled to every destination covered on this site, across Japan, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand. I do most of the writing here at Blueprint Travelers.
Meet Kevin
I was the first person in my immediate family to travel overseas, studying abroad in Madrid, Spain. That trip changed how I understood the world in a way that’s been hard to reverse. The food, the culture, the friendships I made outside my midwestern upbringing set a standard I’ve been chasing in every trip since.
Before co-founding Blueprint Travelers, I spent years in the hospitality industry leading corporate strategy at the largest family restaurant group in the United States. That background gives me a practitioner’s eye for what separates genuinely good hospitality from adequate hospitality. When I recommend a hotel, a restaurant, or a tour operator, I’m evaluating it against a professional standard, not just a personal preference.
I’ve personally traveled to every destination covered on this site alongside Melina. Without her vision, this site would never have existed.
A few things about us:
Languages we speak
English, Spanish, French
Countries Visited (Collectively)
46 and counting. More important to us than the number is making sure we leave each one having actually understood it.
First country we each visited
Kevin: Spain. Melina: France.
Favorite food experience on the road
Kevin: chasing hot sauce through every market in Latin America. Melina: finding the best sandwich in an unexpected city.
How we prefer to get around
Trains or buses, whenever possible
Pieces of luggage we each travel full-time with
One carry-on and one personal item. Everything else is excess.
Days spent traveling for Blueprint Travelers
Over
Days