We speak with respect.
Especially when a day is difficult or opinions differ.
Our story
We started with very little. We grew by looking after one another.
White Houses Tours began as a vague idea in 2019. During the pandemic, it became a 21-year-old van, seven seats, handwritten accounts and one shared hope: to build an honest life around work we loved.
MálagaSince 2020Still learning
Before there was a company
There was one old van and a leap of faith.
At first, White Houses Tours was just the two of us: Elisa and me. The money for our seven-seat van came from one month of night shifts at a nuclear power station. It was already 21 years old. It was not impressive, but it was enough to begin.
We had no office and no polished system. During the first year, we wrote every account by hand on a sheet of paper. Later, our great technological advance was moving those figures into a Word document.
The van did its best to keep us humble. It left us stranded on the way to or from tours more than twenty times. Only once did it win completely: we had to leave a winery in a taxi while the van left on a tow truck. That is not an invented joke. It was a very real day — just much funnier now than it was then.
“We were not trying to look bigger than we were. We were simply trying to do honest work well enough to earn the next opportunity.”
The first yes
Seven quiet months. Then two people gave us a chance.
Seven months passed between publishing the first advert and receiving the first booking. When it finally arrived, it came as a surprise — and with a problem: the description was wrong and promised a completely different tour.
We wrote to the guests, a couple from California, explained everything and apologised. Their answer was wonderfully simple: come and pick us up; we will do the tour anyway.
They did. Afterwards, they left White Houses Tours its first review: five stars. We still remember what that trust meant.
We do not know whether they remember that day as often as we do. We have thought of them — and thanked them quietly — hundreds of times since.
Life did not wait
The business was being built in the middle of real life.
One day, on the way home from a tour, the phone rang: it was time to go to hospital for the birth of our first child. Two days later, we were back out guiding another tour.
We do not tell this to make the story sound heroic. It simply tells the truth about those first years: family, work, fear and hope all lived very close together.
When two became many
The best thing we built was not a tour. It was a team.
At first, it was Elisa and me. Then, little by little, we met people who chose to walk beside us and became part of the story. We have now worked and grown together for years. We are a very mixed group. The only thing we all truly have in common is that we try to be good people — humble, approachable, calm and empathetic with others. Nothing more complicated than that.
We leave nobody alone with a problem.
If one of us needs help, someone else steps closer.
We share the credit.
Good work is almost never the work of one person.
We make room to grow.
The company has grown because the people inside it have too.
Built by open doors
More people helped build this than will ever appear in one photograph.
We are deeply grateful to the wineries, growers and winemakers who opened their doors; to the guides, drivers, kitchens, colleagues and photographers who shared their knowledge; and to the agencies — small and large — that trusted us with their guests.
Many of them said yes when we were still two people knocking on doors and trying to make a living from a dream. Their confidence gave this company roots.
And to every guest who chose a young, unknown company: you gave us something to build upon. We have never forgotten that trust was offered before it could be taken for granted.
Still learning
Passion is not something you finish.
There is always another person to listen to, another vintage to understand and another mistake that can teach us something.
Curiosity carried the company through its first uncertain months. It still matters now. We want to remain close to the people who grow, make, cook and care for this place — and humble enough to keep asking questions.
Remembering other people
One day, we realised life had given us what we once dreamed about.
It felt like the right moment to remember other people too. We spoke with Belén at Fundación Olivares and began a collaboration that has never stopped.
Since then, a fixed percentage of what each guest pays to join one of our tours has gone to Fundación Olivares, alongside any other practical help we can offer. Across a year, those contributions run into thousands of euros.
The foundation stands beside children living with cancer and other serious illnesses, and beside the families carrying that reality with them. Financial help matters. Sometimes a little breathing room matters too.
We once held a wine tasting there for parents. It was not meant to solve anything. It was simply a chance for people under enormous pressure to have a few hours for themselves — to talk, laugh and be looked after.
If we can be useful to any charitable initiative that helps other people, please count on us. Tell us about it at info@whitehousestours.com.
Learn about Fundación Olivares (opens in a new tab)
Further than we imagined
Sometimes we look up and can hardly believe where that old van brought us.
We have taken part in FITUR and twice in World Travel Market alongside Foro de Turismo de la Costa del Sol. More than 10,000 people now join our tours in a year.
We are proud of those milestones, but they do not make us feel big. Quite the opposite. They remind us how small the first idea was, how much help we received and how fortunate we are to earn a living from something that once existed only in our imagination.
Most mornings we wake up with more ideas than hours in the day. We are now working on projects that could take us beyond 20,000 people next year. That number still feels enormous, so we say it softly and with gratitude.
Growth will only mean something if the care survives it. While we work towards that next chapter, we will keep looking after the small details so that every person who joins us leaves amazed — and, if we have done things right, sends one of those beautiful goodbye emails that can make our whole day.
FITURTaking our place in the conversation
2 × WTMAlongside Foro de Turismo de la Costa del Sol
10,000+People joining our tours in a year
Our door is open
Good things often begin with a simple hello.
White Houses Tours is now a group of good people doing work we care about. We try to keep the workplace kind, the standards high and the help between us immediate. We still feel small, enormously fortunate and grateful to life for letting us work in something we once only dreamed about.
If you are a guide, producer, local business, agency, creator or simply someone who feels we could build something good together, our inbox is open. The same is true if you would like to work with us, collaborate or explore a partnership. You do not need a finished proposal. A sincere hello is enough.
Write to us at info@whitehousestours.comThank you to everyone who trusted us before there was much to trust. And thank you to the people beside us now.
The White Houses Tours team