WITH MERAKI TRAVEL COLLECTION
Leave seeing more
Food, people, culture and nature, brought together in ways that let you enjoy a place and know more of it
The collection
What sounds good?
Start with what draws you in. We’ll work out the rest.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CREATIVE JOURNEY
Step inside a creative life
Creativity, Lived
Spend a few hours inside a working creative home, where rooms, objects and everyday choices reveal how ideas take shape.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CULTURE JOURNEY
Come for the table. Stay for the conversation
The Art of Gathering
A small gathering built around food, good company and the kind of conversation that gets better as the evening goes on.
CALABARZON · ADVENTURE JOURNEY
Sail Taal Lake
Under Sail
Learn the basics, take a line in hand and experience the lake from the water.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CULTURE JOURNEY
Go inside old Manila
The House That Remembers
Enter a home where architecture, objects and family stories keep pieces of the city’s past within reach.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CULTURE JOURNEY
See how America changed Manila
The American Philippines
Follow the architecture and institutions that reveal how one era reshaped the city.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CULTURE JOURNEY
Go treasure hunting
The Filipino Cabinet of Curiosities
Choose the Filipino objects that catch your eye. Hear their stories. Then continue the conversation over a shared table.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CULTURE JOURNEY
Step inside Manila’s big ideas
The Nation in a Building
Read a building as more than architecture: a statement about nationhood, identity and public life.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CULTURE JOURNEY
Read the city through its buildings
Architecture, Identity & Power
Look at the structures that reveal who held power, what they valued and the Manila they wanted to build.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CULTURE JOURNEY
Follow Manila’s connections to the world
The City That Connected the World
Trace the trade, migration and exchange that made the city part of a much larger story.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · GASTRONOMY JOURNEY
Taste it. Make it. Meet the people behind it
Trade, Taste & Making
Start with food, follow the story into trade and migration, then meet people making things in the city today.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CREATIVE JOURNEY
Hear Manila differently
Sound, Making & Movement
Enter the city through music, movement and the people keeping creative traditions in motion.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CREATIVE JOURNEY
Meet the makers of Marikina
The City That Made Itself
Go behind the finished object and into the skill, enterprise and ingenuity needed to make it.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · GASTRONOMY JOURNEY
Come hungry
The Neighbourhood That Ate Together
Follow a neighbourhood through the food it shares, the people who make it and the life happening around the table.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CREATIVE JOURNEY
See old Manila take on a new life
The Building That Refused to Die
Discover how an old building survives, adapts and finds a new life in the city.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CREATIVE JOURNEY
Find the Manila you weren’t expecting
The Manila People Invented
Meet people creating new versions of the city beyond the usual routes and familiar stories.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CREATIVE JOURNEY
Step inside the Filipino imagination
The Philippine Imagination
Meet contemporary creative practice through the work, questions and people behind it.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · LEARNING & EXPLORATION
Meet people turning ideas into something real
Where Ideas Come Alive
Spend time with practitioners, thinkers and makers who are putting new ideas to work.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · CREATIVE JOURNEY
See what happens when creative worlds meet
Where Art Meets Ideas
Move through art, design, performance and conversation in an experience built around exchange.
METRO MANILA & ENVIRONS · NATURE JOURNEY
Find Manila’s wild side
The City’s Last Wild Edge
Head toward the city’s natural edges and see how water, habitat and human life meet.
CENTRAL VISAYAS & NEGROS · GASTRONOMY JOURNEY
Start at the table
Come to the table
Begin with something good to eat and the people behind it.
CENTRAL VISAYAS & NEGROS · GASTRONOMY JOURNEY
Stay long enough to look beyond the obvious
Come stay awhile
Three days gives you time to connect food, land and everyday life without rushing.
CENTRAL VISAYAS & NEGROS · GASTRONOMY JOURNEY
Settle into the rhythm
Come into the rhythm
Five days gives you more time with producers, kitchens, landscapes and the pace of daily life.
CENTRAL VISAYAS & NEGROS · GASTRONOMY JOURNEY
Follow the story further
Come follow the story
Spend a week tracing how food, farms, landscapes and people connect across Negros.
CENTRAL VISAYAS & NEGROS · GASTRONOMY JOURNEY
Stay long enough to live it
Come live the cultivated life
A stay of two to four weeks turns the journey into a temporary rhythm of food, place and everyday life.
Guest reflections
From people who came along
“I felt safe, seen, heard, and connected. I really loved learning from both young and old and from people going through different life chapters. Loved learning from others in a meaningful way. This fed my soul for connection, reflective thinking, learning.”
“I was honoured to be in such fab company… Loved and appreciated the warmth, sincerity, humility, journeys, stories, laughter, and love.”
Travel Guides
Know before you go
Food
What is Negros known for? Food, sugar heritage and slower travel
Negros is strongly associated with sugar heritage, but that is only one part of the story. Food, ancestral towns, farms, biodiversity, marine lands...
Ria Cortez · The Storyseeking Traveler
Food
Where to experience Filipino food culture in Manila
For a food-led introduction to Manila, look beyond individual dishes. The strongest experiences connect what you eat to migration, neighborhood lif...
Ria Cortez · The Storyseeking Traveler
Creative life
What to do in Manila if you’ve already seen the usual sights
If you already know Intramuros, the major museums and the standard city highlights, the next layer of Manila is found in smaller stories: collectio...
Ria Cortez · The Storyseeking Traveler
Culture
Best cultural experiences in Manila: what to prioritize
If you want to understand Manila rather than simply tick off landmarks, prioritize experiences that connect the city’s history, food, architecture,...
Ria Cortez · The Storyseeking Traveler
Choose the pace
How much time do you have?
Souló · a few hours to a day
Make a day of it
For when you want somewhere worth going without planning the route, timings and people yourself
With Meraki Travel Collection · multi-day journeys
Let the trip hold together
For longer trips, we connect the route, stays, people and pace from one day to the next
Destinations
Start with the place
Destination
Philippines
Food, culture and landscapes across the archipelago, seen through the people who know them
Meet the team
Barbara Kitane
Founder · Experience & Social Design
GSTC Professional Certification in Sustainable Tourism · 20+ years across tourism, hospitality, culture, sustainability and experience design
Barbara notices how a place feels before she explains why: the pace, the people, the atmosphere, the small choices that shape the day. She is drawn to journeys that feel considered rather than crowded, where there is room to notice what gives a place its character. She prefers depth over spectacle, good judgment over excess, and experiences that stay with you because nothing feels forced.
Ria Cortez
Growth · Marketing & Communications
Background in philosophy, media and storytelling · Experience across brand growth, marketing, communications, and content production
Ria’s instinct is to look past the obvious. Philosophy taught her to question assumptions, follow ideas to their source and pay attention to how meaning is made. She carries that into travel, drawn to the people, details and contradictions that reveal more of a place. In her work, that same curiosity becomes story, image and communication, finding the thought worth noticing, then giving people a reason to lean in.
Field Notes
Know what’s opening next
New dates, places and occasional notes from the road
Keep close
Come away with us
New departures and useful travel notes, sent when there’s something worth sharing
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