Shannon Kenny
Founder
Founder Shannon Kenny received a Master's Degree in Medieval and Renaissance History and has worked as a published author, editor, and educator in the fields of history, French and Italian language, the social sciences, and educational and boutique travel for over 17 years.
After many years of traveling to Italy for both work and pleasure, Shannon founded the international children’s cultural program Arte al Sole in 2007 to serve the needs of families traveling and living abroad. To meet families’ demand for quality and trustworthy travel information, in 2008 Shannon launched Italiakids.com, an online resource for family travel to Italy. As Italiakids.com grew, readers increasingly reached out to Shannon with requests for travel concierge trip planning for itineraries that included Italy as well as other destinations in Europe. Due to word-of-mouth referrals among her clientele, Shannon expanded by request beyond family travel to design all manner of itineraries, and Elaia Travel was born.
Shannon spent summers in Forte de Marmi and the Lucca area for many years and lived in Florence and Rome. She now divides her time each year between Italy and California. In 2017, Shannon founded Prontopia, an app that pairs travelers with locals for on-demand assistance with travel solutions, making your trip stress free and full of meaningful connections.
Elaia Travel
The Bella Vita Travel Team
Trip Planning Coordinators
Elaia Travel is pleased to partner with the travel team at Bella Vita Travels, a group of Italy-based trip planners with decades of expertise in the travel and hospitality industries. We have an insatiable thirst for travel and to deliver extraordinary Mediterranean experiences for our clients to enjoy. We constantly visit the places we send our clients and we have built decades worth of relationships and expertise over those years.
What distinguishes Bella Vita Travels from traditional travel agencies is that we create our client’s custom itineraries from critical elements of travel–accommodations, guides, drivers, and experiences–that we have organically built ourselves. We never deliver a travel itinerary that is impersonal or resell you another group’s trip. We curate a unique itinerary for you based around your travel preferences combined with our deep first-hand experiences and knowledge. We have developed a strong network of supplier relationships in the destinations we send clients, we form our own opinions based solely on-location research, and we work with suppliers who provide the highest standard of quality and service whether they are part of an acclaimed boutique hotel group, or just a quaint little inn that you would never find in a popular travel guidebook.