Meet Joan Qualls, your group travel expert

Meet Joan Qualls, Your Travel Expert

Joan here! I’m the culinary travel specialist behind Tasteful Voyages®, and I’m here to help you indulge your senses in downright delicious ways.

How did I get here, planning culinary travel?

It certainly wasn’t a straight and narrow path. For 30 years, I was in the healthcare industry, where I worked my way up to a position as a finance executive.

Turns out, combing through complicated hospital contracts is great practice for planning travel--you can count on me to read the fine print, juggle all the complicated logistics, and smoothly manage the challenges that detailed travel itineraries present!

When I wasn’t knee-deep in numbers, I was indulging my passion: food and wine (and a bit of beer, too!)

And I firmly believe that the best way to explore and expand my culinary passion is through travel.

I’ve taken cooking courses all around the globe, from Chicago to Tuscany, Barcelona to Abruzzo, La Jolla to aboard a ship in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. I’ve toured and tasted at vineyards in France’s Loire Valley, Italy’s Chianti region, and bright, young vineyards up and down the U.S.A.’s West Coast. And I’ve sipped brews in iconic locales, like the beer gardens of Belgium and the Heineken brewery in Amsterdam.

If it makes my taste buds sing, it makes my heart soar — and that’s why I love working with travelers who share this passion with me, and with those who are just dipping a toe into the realm of culinary travel. ​

For the past four years, I’ve helped fellow foodies indulge their passions by planning seamless trips that connect travelers to a destination’s food culture and history — and to each other. Every culture shares meals together, and food is one of the best ways to connect with those in the destination in which you have chosen to stay, as well as with those who have traveled with you. 

If you are a business owner strengthening your relationships with your best customers, leading a group culinary travel experience is absolutely the most fun you can have building your business. And if you are taking this trip to rejuvenate away from work, I can almost guarantee that a vacation based around tasting the most flavorful foods and drinks, learning about their history, and connecting with the people around you will become your model for future time away from home.

Get ready for a travel experience that spurs growth, strengthens your relationships (customer or otherwise), and takes you to incredible culinary sites with elegance and ease.

What kind of trip should we whip up next? 

Get in touch and we’ll chat travel and all sorts of tasty things on a complimentary consultation call.


— Joan

TESTIMONIALS

We recently celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary and decided to take a trip to Italy!  We started online but there was SO MUCH information that it was overwhelming.  That's when we called Joan for help.  At first we called to just "pick her brain".  Once she started sharing great ideas of different tours to take and can't miss places to visit we handed the planning over to her.  Our trip was a little complicated;  the first half was on our own and then  our kids joined us, and then we met other relatives also in Italy.   Joan coordinated it all beautifully.  She selected quaint boutique hotels that had a lovely breakfast and were well located.   For our first day in Rome she arranged a golf cart tour that really set the stage for our adventure.  We would never have found that tour ourselves.    Working within our budget, she planned tours and activities that kept us busy but also left us ample time to explore on our own.   She sent guides that helped us navigate the major cities we visited.  I would definitely call Joan again for another adventure.  Judy & Barry, Chicago, Illinois
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We highly recommend Joan as a vacation designer.   My husband and I were apprehensive about traveling to Italy. He had traveled overseas, and I been there as a teenager with my parents.  Before the trip, Joan prepared packet that included useful information i.e. packing information, cell phone info, currency exchange info and more.  Traveling for us was worry free, as Joan arranged the perfect trip for us. We traveled in a group of 7, with Rome as our home base.  for a week. Joan had scheduled day trips in and around Rome with private tour guides in a van or golf carts. We experienced Florence, Tivoli, Pompeii and Amalfi Coast, and many of the classic Roman sites, with a pre-arranged guide in each location.  Joan knew local restaurants and really knew how to experience Italy.  Our trip was most enjoyable and we highly recommend Joan Qualls to help plan your trip!  Kathy & Steve, Galesburg, Illinois

Since 2015, Joan has opened our gateways to adventure, including cooking school in Abruzzo, Italy and a cruise around Cuba with a private guide to the tastes, sights, and sounds of Havana. But she earned our absolute devotion on a recent trip when on our last night in Salzburg, Austria a slip & fall required an ambulance, ER, and overnight hospital stay for my husband. Joan spanned the multiple time zones to connect the travel insurer with the hospital, expedite the insurer’s medical review, AND had us re-booked on a flight in time for us to get to Vienna and board our originally booked flight home – which she knew was exactly where we wanted to be by then. Oh, and the trip “before the fall” was breathtaking – a hotel in Prague that could not have been cuter or more convenient, a driver service to Salzburg with sightseeing stops along the way, and two VERY difficult to obtain tickets Ricardo Muti’s production of Aida at the Salzburg Festival. There’s NO ONE like Joan in this business!!! - Andrea & Barry, Chicago, Illinois
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