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After working as an architect for several years, Leticia Arzuaga (B.ARCH. ’13) attended a team building exercise in which she was asked, “What’s your dream?”

Coming up with an answer turned out to be harder than she thought it would be. Her dream had been to become an architect, and she’d achieved it. But she yearned for something more.

Her thoughts drifted to her childhood in Brazil, where she would take impromptu, day-long road trips with her family to see Iguaza Falls in Argentina.

“Traveling and community and family, those were big things for me growing up. I love architecture and problem solving, but I also love people,” she says, “and travel was always in me.”

She remained an architect for a couple more years, but when a friend with 34 years in the travel industry lost her job during the COVID-19 pandemic, the two began brainstorming a startup business idea. It turned out to be the career switch Arzuaga felt she needed.

The company Arzuaga co-founded in 2024, , offers a travel service that she says she hasn’t seen anywhere else.

The company doesn’t book trips or secure tickets. Instead, it offers potential travelers who are keen on visiting a specific area to connect with a local, licensed, and experienced tour guide and then talk online for an hour about potential destinations and insider tips.

Clients don’t have to hire the guide when they go; they only pay for the advice.

“Instead of browsing 50 websites, you video chat with a local tour guide and plan your trip. And then if you like them and want to book a custom tour you can,” Arzuaga says. “What my partner found after 34 years in the travel industry is there’s two things missing in travel: human connection and custom tours. This is a new way to travel plan instead of doing it by yourself.”

The service is geared toward frequent or “premium” travelers who are daunted by doing 50 hours of research before visiting a new country. Often, people who are on business trips are only in a country for a few hours and just want to get some local tips about quick dining or sightseeing.

“Not everyone wants to take a tour, but everyone wants local info. You’re speaking to a local that speaks your language about your specific needs,” Arzuaga says, noting that she once had a tour guide in Ireland who advised one of her 70-year-old clients about specific waterfalls that they could feasibly walk up to.

The guides benefit because it allows them to work year-round, including in their offseason or into retirement, Arzuaga says. “We’re kind of in the midst of this information overload: we have TikTok, Google, and you spend a lot of time filtering what’s real or not. We wanted to address this,” she says.

While the company is still in its growth stages, Arzuaga says she’s starting to receive calls from travel agents referring clints to the company. Contenta360 includes its own platform for connecting, such as a calendar and built-in video chat, and it now has 44 vetted tour guides in 22 countries.

While the startup is a big change from her time as an architect—she worked at ZGA Architects and Planners and Babcock Design Group in Boise, Idaho, and JMA Architecture Inc. in Perry, Georgia—Arzuaga says the problem-solving element is still the same. She now also tackles the business side, including accounting and finance, and manages Contenta360’s website, as well as a staff of five.

“Doing technical drawings was fine, but I really do like talking to people and communicating more than reading code for three days in a row,” she laughs. “We stay in touch with some clients. To hear the stories of traveling takes me back to my childhood and how transformative traveling can be.” —Tad Vezner