Frequently Asked Questions
I get a lot of the same questions. In DMs, in airport lines, at retreat dinners, in the parking lot of grocery stores when a woman recognizes Lexie. I figured it was time to answer them in one place. If yours is not here, the contact page will get you a real answer from me. Usually within 48 hours. Sometimes longer if I am on the road.
Travel With Me
For anyone thinking about a Lady V Luxe Retreat, a hosted group trip, or a custom luxury itinerary.
Yes. Most of the women who come to me are exactly where you are. Newly single, recently retired, kids finally launched, or just done waiting for the right travel partner to materialize. You do not need to have done this before. You need someone who knows how to handle the parts that feel overwhelming, whether I have walked that exact destination myself or I am pulling in a trusted specialist from my network who has. Either way, I plan the trip. You show up.
Only you can answer that. What I can tell you is that some of the women on my retreats and custom trips have booked exactly because they did not want to wait until they "felt ready." They wanted something on the calendar to walk toward. A trip is not a fix. It is a marker. A way of saying out loud, my life is not over. I am still here. I am still going.
No. The women on a Lady V Luxe Retreat are usually 50 to 68. Most are coming alone. A few come with a friend or sister. Nobody is "the only one." The whole point of the way these are designed is that you walk in as a stranger and leave with women you will text for the rest of your life.
No, and I will not put you in that position. Every retreat is priced with a private room as the default. If you want to share with a friend you brought along, we can arrange that. If you are traveling solo, your room is your own.
It depends on the property and the destination, and I will always tell you the number before you commit. Some properties have generous solo pricing. Others charge more for a single occupancy room. I will not surprise you with a fee at the end. The full investment is on the page before you ever fill out an application.
Yes. The destinations I curate are chosen partly for that reason. Properties with proper security, neighborhoods vetted by me or by specialists I trust, transfers handled by drivers I know by name or by partners I have personally vetted. On a hosted retreat, you are not navigating airports or strange cities alone. On a custom itinerary, I build the trip so you never feel exposed. You are not a target on a trip I have planned. You are a guest.
A small group of women, a hand-selected property, private transfers, curated daily experiences, most meals, and the kind of pacing that lets you actually feel where you are. Specifics vary by destination. Every retreat page lists what is included and what is not before you apply. There are no surprise charges.
The properties, for one. The access, for another. But mostly the pacing and the people. A tour rushes you through ten cities. A retreat lets you stay in one beautiful place long enough to actually rest. A tour is a stranger with a flag. A retreat is me, the same woman whose newsletters you have been reading, hosting you in person. If you want a packed itinerary at a budget price, book the tour. If you want to come home different, come with me.
Yes. Custom luxury itineraries are a real part of what I do, and not every trip I plan is a women's retreat. Honeymoons, anniversary trips, milestone birthdays, family travel, cruises, destination weddings, multi-generational trips. The application form on the contact page lets you tell me what you have in mind, and we go from there.
Thailand, Bali, and Dubai are the ones I am formally certified in. I am a Culture Holidays Certified Thailand Expert, Bali Expert, and Dubai Destination Expert. The Mediterranean and the rest of Southeast Asia are part of the broader work, and I am AmaWaterways Gold and Virgin Voyages Seamate certified for river and ocean cruising. If you have a dream destination outside that list, ask. I belong to the International Travel Writers Alliance and have a network of trusted destination specialists I work with, so even when a trip is somewhere I have not personally walked yet, you are still being planned for by someone with deep, vetted expertise.
Lady V Luxe Retreats are women-only by design. Custom itineraries are for anyone. Couples, families, friends, solo travelers. If you and your husband want a trip planned, I am the right woman for the job. If you want a week away with other women, the retreat is the answer.
Lexie (my service dog) comes everywhere with me, so I understand the question more than most people would. The honest answer is: it depends on the destination, the airline, the property, and whether your dog is a service animal or a pet. International travel with a small dog is doable but the requirements are real, and they are different for every country. If this matters to you, tell me on the application and I will lay out exactly what your trip would actually look like.
For a Luxe Retreat, as soon as the dates open. They are small by design and they fill from the newsletter list first. For a custom itinerary, the answer depends on the destination, but six months out is a comfortable runway for international luxury travel. Three months is doable. Six weeks is tight but I have pulled it off.
A custom luxury itinerary is built around your budget. Retreats are listed per-person and the investment is on the page before you apply. Lady V Luxe Retreats are not the cheapest trips you can take and they are not trying to be. They are designed for women who would rather take one extraordinary week than four mediocre ones.
Build With Me
For the woman thinking about becoming a travel advisor on my team.
I am going to answer this honestly, because the women who ask it are right to ask it. There are two parts to the business I built, and I want you to understand both before you decide anything.
The first part, and the main part, is the travel advisor work itself. You book travel for clients through my host agency. You earn commissions on those bookings. That is a real travel business and it is the same way travel advisors have earned their living for decades. This is where the actual income comes from.
The second part is optional. There is a team-building component, which means advisors can choose to mentor other women into the business and earn a percentage of their team's bookings if they want to. I do this part because I love mentoring women in their second chapter, and it has been a meaningful piece of my own income. But it is a choice. Not a requirement.
You pick the path that fits the business you want to build. Advisor only, where you focus entirely on booking travel for clients. Or advisor plus team, where you also mentor other women into the business. I will guide you in either direction.
If a recruiter ever tells you the only way to make money in travel is to recruit other people, run. That is not what I do, and it is not what I will teach you.
Yes, and I will tell you what is realistic. Year one is rarely six figures. Year one is the year you learn the systems, build a client list, and earn your first commissions while you are still figuring out the rhythm. The women on my team who are doing this seriously are earning real income by year two and scaling from there. Anyone who promises you a fast six figures is selling you something other than the truth.
My host agency has its own startup and monthly fee structure for the advisor side. If you add the team-building component, there are additional considerations. The numbers change occasionally and I will give you the current numbers on a discovery call so you can decide with full information. There is also the cost of your time, which is the part most "opportunity" pitches skip. This is a real business. You need to treat it like one.
You do not need to chase your own IATA. My host agency provides the booking credentials and the supplier relationships. Certifications come over time, and they are how you specialize. I am a Certified Luxury Travel Specialist, a Culture Holidays Certified Thailand Expert, Bali Expert, and Dubai Destination Expert, AmaWaterways Gold certified, and Virgin Voyages Seamate certified. Those credentials were earned year by year. You will earn yours the same way.
The training is real. It covers booking systems, supplier relationships, client communication, niche development, and the actual mechanics of running a travel business. I supplement my host agency's training with my own mentorship, weekly check-ins, a private community, and the systems I have built over years of doing this. If you join my team, you do not get dropped into a Facebook group and wished luck. You get me.
Yes. Most of the women on my team start that way. It is one of the reasons the work suits second-chapter women so well. You can build it in the margins of your current life until it earns enough to be the main thing. Some women keep it part-time forever because they love their work and just want the travel perks and the side income. Others scale into it full-time. Both are valid.
No. The advisor on my team who is making the most money right now started in her late 50s. The skill set this work rewards is exactly the skill set women in their second chapter already have. You have spent decades managing logistics, planning trips for your family, researching the good hotels, knowing the right questions to ask. You already do this work. You just have not been paid for it yet.
You are not going to be asked to. The way I teach this business is service-first. You become the woman your friends ask for travel advice from, the way I became that woman, and the bookings follow. Nobody on my team is taught to pitch their family at brunch. That is the version of this work that gave the industry a bad name. We are not doing it.
For a part-time advisor working ten hours a week, you can build a real practice. For a full-time advisor, this is a full-time business. I work hard. I love the work, but I work. Anyone who tells you this is "passive income from a beach" is not running a real travel business.
A conversation. The contact page has a place to tell me you are interested in the travel advisor side. Tell me where you are in your life, what is pulling you toward this, and what your hesitations are. I will tell you honestly whether I think this is the right fit for you, the same way I would tell a friend.
For Brands
For brand teams, PR leads, tourism boards, and partnership inquiries.
UGC content, brand campaigns, hosted partnerships, tourism board collaborations, and authentic editorial coverage for travel, hospitality, wellness, and lifestyle brands targeting women 40 and up. I am selective. I take on partnerships where my audience would genuinely benefit and where the brand fits the world I have built.
Women 40 and over, weighted toward 50 to 68. Household income $85K to $250K and up. They are reinventing, traveling, and spending intentionally. They trust me because I have lived the chapter they are stepping into. If your brand wants to reach this woman with content that actually converts, I am the right call.
The For Brands form on the contact page. Tell me about your brand, the campaign, the timing, and the audience you are trying to reach. I will respond within a week.
About the Brand
It was not a branding decision. It was a name life handed me. My real name is Ansavelia, after my grandmother. People struggled with it, so I went by V, then Miss V at a radio station in Hammond, Louisiana, in my early 30s. Lady V came back to me years later when I stepped into the travel work. By then it felt earned.
It is me. I write the newsletters. I host the retreats. I answer the DMs. There is a small team behind the systems, the editing, and the admin, because the brand has grown to the point where one woman cannot run all of it alone. But the woman at the front of the brand is the woman in the brand. You are not talking to a marketing intern when you reach out.
On the road. I sold a 4,000 square foot home in Florida and traded it for a luxury RV. Lexie and I travel full-time. I host retreats internationally, plan trips from wherever I am parked, and write from the road. The brand is built around freedom because freedom is the life I built first.
That is Lexie Lu Lala, my service dog. She is twelve years old, five pounds, and the biggest personality in any room she walks into. She has been beside me through every chapter of this rebuild. If you see her on a retreat or in a brand campaign, that is on purpose. She earned her credit.
A portion of every retreat supports the orphanage we help run in Liberia, West Africa. It is a long-standing commitment of mine. Leaving people better than I found them is a thread that runs through all of it.
Still Have a Question
If your question is not here, the contact page will reach me. Tell me what brought you here, and I will come meet you there.
