The story behind the person who will show you Portugal

Where it all began

I grew up in Antigua Guatemala, a place where the world seemed to come to you.

Antigua was my little bubble. It was beautiful, historic, and surrounded by people from everywhere. My family had been welcoming international people for generations. The house where I grew up had originally been bought by my great-grandfather from a Swiss couple, and being around foreigners, travelers, and different cultures was simply part of everyday life.

But there was something else I inherited from my family: an entrepreneurial spirit.

On my father's side, my grandfather inherited a printing business from his father. He ran it throughout his life, working until almost the very end — literally until about a week before he passed away.

My grandmother was a different kind of force. She was tough, determined, and very capable in business. At one point, while my father was returning from the United States, she had acquired another printing operation herself and gave it to him. That became an important part of my parents' professional life.

My father was the producer, the person focused on making things happen on the operational side. My mother was the people person. She was naturally good at relationships, negotiations, and making deals with the business's partners and clients.

On my mother's side, my grandfather was involved in the coffee business. He worked with German initiatives connected to the export of high-quality Guatemalan coffee. He was successful, had a strong instinct for business, and was very good at making deals. My grandmother, from what I remember, was primarily a homemaker, before she Married she worked as a model and worked at the family business, which is a Photo-Shop.

So I grew up seeing different sides of business around me: production, negotiation, relationships, deals, independence, and the responsibility of running something of your own.

And then, without really realizing it, my sister and I started doing the same thing ourselves.

We made little businesses called 'Los Pequeñitos'. We'd go around the neighborhood selling our Seasonal cookies that we used to bake ourselves, cinnamon, choco-chip and orange cooking, later we introduced chocolate with our personalised shapes, my father supported us always with high quality.

At the time, we didn't call it entrepreneurship.

It was simply normal to us.

When the world became bigger

Antigua was home, but by the time I was fifteen, I already knew there was a bigger world waiting for me.

My family had a tradition: when you turned fifteen, you went to the United States to open your mind.

When it was my turn, I insisted on going.

My father gave me $600 for expenses, and told me to find the best flight I could for him to purchase. I traveled alone.

I still remember arriving in the United States and feeling like something had shifted. I had spent my childhood surrounded by stories about other countries and people who had traveled, but now I was experiencing another world for myself.

At the exact moment of passing migration I noticed that my uncle forgot to pick me up from the airport. I waited outside for about an hour, I called to his number from a public number using the collect call and an hour and a half later he finally picked me up and said, “Oh, I thought that you arrived later.”

Somehow, I was never worried, the excitement was and has always been bigger than any unexpected situation. I hat trip gave me independence. It made the world feel accessible.

Before that trip, I resisted learning English because everyone kept telling me that English would open doors and it was common to every person to speak it but I somehow wanted something different than the rest, even in languages, so I started with Hebrew. 

But after experiencing traveling to California myself, I came home and told my parents that I wanted to learn English. My teachers were Americans and one Canadian. 

That was the beginning of something much bigger.

I started traveling whenever I could. At nineteen, I took my first trip to Europe, traveling through Norway, France, Sweden and Denmark. I eventually spent three months in Norway.

Travel stopped being something I admired from a distance.

It became part of who I was.

When tourism became my world

I studied Business Administration, but almost ninety percent of my professional life has been connected to tourism and hospitality.

My first serious chapter in the industry came through Tropicana in Antigua.

It happened almost by accident.

I had been working at a farm where I felt undervalued and eventually lost the job. I went through a difficult period afterward.

Then Rodrigo, someone I barely knew from a café I used to visit, called me.

He remembered that I spoke English and told me they needed someone immediately at Tropicana.

I lived 1 minute away.

So I went.

I walked into my first shift and immediately found myself surrounded by people who needed something from me. Guests, coworkers, problems, questions, movement everywhere.

I don't even remember everything that happened that first day because my brain was working so intensely.

But I remember doing the job.

And I remember being hired.

That place changed my life.

What Tropicana taught me

At Tropicana, I discovered that hospitality wasn't simply about serving people.

It was about knowing people.

I remembered guests' names. I remembered their faces. I wanted to know where they came from, what brought them to Guatemala, what they were interested in, and what would make their experience better.

I wasn't trying to perform hospitality.

I genuinely cared.

And I discovered that I loved being around people from different parts of the world.

Tropicana also gave me something I desperately needed at that point in my life: freedom.

I had grown up in a very structured environment, and suddenly I was surrounded by people, travelers, ideas, possibilities, and a completely different way of living.

It opened my eyes.

I eventually became an operations manager, working alongside Karen, and I learned about leadership, operations, conflict, guest relations, and everything that happens behind the scenes when you're responsible for making an experience work.

But perhaps the most important thing I learned there was from Lorena, the owner.

She led by example.

When I had been there for only about six months, I asked about taking a vacation because I wanted to travel.

She essentially told me: go.

She told me I could travel as much as I wanted. I didn't need to ask permission. I just had to tell them when I was going and let them know when I knew when I would return.

That level of trust changed the way I saw work.

I could travel.

I could work.

I could be responsible.

Those things didn't have to be opposites.

I saved practically everything I earned and traveled whenever I could. Every trip expanded my understanding of people and places.

And every time I returned to Antigua, I brought something new back with me.

The difficult part of loving something

Tropicana also taught me that loving something doesn't mean you have to stay forever.

Eventually, I found myself in a difficult situation as a manager. I had to make decisions about staff, guests, policies, and the operation, and there were moments when I felt that my authority and judgment weren't being respected.

The situation eventually became too emotionally charged, and I resigned.

It was a good decision because COVID hit Guatemala a few months after and my new job allowed me to work remotely.

Then, a year or two later, I was sitting outside a club with Dean Kerlin, one of the other owners, sharing a few drinks.

And I admitted to him:

“Dean, I don't know if I made the right choice leaving Tropicana. I would actually like to go back.”

He told me it was a difficult request and that he didn't know whether he could help me.

Then he gave me advice that stayed with me.

He reminded me that if I wanted to be a leader, I couldn't allow another person's presence or opinion to intimidate me to the point where I abandoned my position.

It was a hard thing to hear but I took the advise with a smile and a very small and discreet laugh.

And he had a point.

Looking back, I can recognise that there were things I could have handled differently.

But I also recognise that leaving was necessary.

Because leaving Tropicana opened the next chapter of my life.

Learning from every side of hospitality

After Tropicana, I continued moving through different sides of the service industry.

I worked in customer service and sales at Fossil, where I gained experience working with premium clients.

During COVID, I received a call from the Operations Manager offering me an opportunity outside of the usual calls. It was a remote position supporting Coursera, which at the time was considered the call center’s premium account. Access to the account was highly selective — positions were not publicly offered and were filled mainly through recommendations.

That experience introduced me to something I thought it was not necessary for me: a life where work didn't necessarily have to determine where you lived.

That idea stayed with me.

I had already spent years traveling.

Now I was beginning to understand that the life I wanted wasn't necessarily a conventional one.

I didn't want to spend my entire life following a predetermined formula simply because that was what people were supposed to do.

I wanted freedom.

I wanted movement.

I wanted meaningful work.

And I wanted to build something that felt like mine.

Portugal

Eventually, that search brought me to Portugal.

I moved to Portugal in 2024.

And once again, I found myself working directly with international travellers, this time at the Sheraton Lisboa Hotel & Spa, where I worked in reception and concierge services in a five-star environment.

By then, I wasn't simply learning hospitality anymore.

I had almost a decade of experience behind me.

I had worked reception.

Operations.

Sales.

Customer service.

Guest relations.

Bars.

Restaurants.

Hostels.

Hotels.

Remote premium service.

I had been the traveler.

I had been the person taking care of travelers.

I had been behind the scenes.

I had been responsible for business operations.

And I had experienced hospitality from almost every angle.

That experience eventually led me to something very simple:

I wanted to do it my way.

Why I created Esdras Azmitia | Private Concierge

I didn't suddenly decide to become a concierge.

I spent years becoming one.

The traveler in me wants to explore.

The historian in me wants to understand.

The entrepreneur in me wants to create.

And the hospitality professional in me wants to make sure that when someone is in my care, they feel genuinely looked after.

That's what brought these parts of me together.

I created Esdras Azmitia | Private Concierge because I believe travel can be much more personal than following an itinerary someone else created for thousands of people.

Portugal has extraordinary history, culture, landscapes, food, people, and stories.

But knowing where those things are isn't enough.

You need to know how to experience them.

Sometimes that means discovering a historic place.

Sometimes it means finding the restaurant you would never have found on your own.

Sometimes it means slowing down.

Sometimes it means changing the plan completely because something more interesting has appeared.

And sometimes the best part of a journey is something you couldn't have planned in advance.

What hospitality means to me

For me, great hospitality begins with observation.

It's noticing what someone needs before they have to ask.

It's understanding that every traveler is different.

It's knowing when to speak, when to listen, when to recommend something, and when to simply let someone enjoy the moment.

Over the years, I've become something of a sponge.

I observe people.

I learn from them.

I adapt to different situations without losing who I am.

I've learned from guests, coworkers, managers, travelers, friends, and people who challenged me.

Every person I've encountered has contributed something to the way I understand hospitality today.

And that's why I don't see my job as simply showing someone Portugal.

I see it as creating the conditions for them to experience it meaningfully.

Beyond the itinerary

I don't believe meaningful travel is about collecting destinations. Of course, that I have my country count and I talk about it with pride.

I've traveled because I wanted to understand the world, I wanted to experience everything I could to bring it home with me and share it to my people.

I've worked in tourism because I wanted to understand people.

I've studied history because I wanted to understand where places came from. My favorite so far is the Story behind Spain. 

And now I bring all of those things together in Portugal.

My goal isn't to make you feel like a tourist who passed through.

It's to help you experience Portugal with curiosity, context, comfort, and a sense of connection.

You arrive as a visitor.

And hopefully, you leave with a story that belongs to you.

A little more about me

I'm Guatemalan by birth, Portuguese by home, a historian at heart, and a traveler by nature.

I've spent much of my life crossing borders; geographically, professionally, culturally, and personally.

I've learned that there is rarely only one way to do something.

I've learned that sometimes you have to leave something you love.

I've learned that fear doesn't disappear; you simply learn not to let it make every decision for you.

And I've learned that when you give yourself enough space to observe, explore, rest, and follow your curiosity, ideas have a way of appearing.

That is the spirit I bring to my work.

Curiosity.
Hospitality.
History.
Freedom.
And a genuine love for people.

This is Portugal through my eyes.