One group, built one region at a time
Bespoke Group didn't start as a group. It started as one person working in one region, and it grew only where someone was willing to live there and answer the phone.
Tuscany, and nothing else
Martina Grillini founded Bespoke Tuscany in 2019, on the back of more than a decade in the travel industry. Not a catalogue of Italy — one region, with the cars, the drivers and the people she could vouch for personally.
That constraint turned out to be the whole idea. Working in one territory long enough to know which producer answers in August, which road is hopeless at the wrong hour, which driver you can send to a difficult client — none of that scales by adding destinations to a brochure.
Calabria, the far south
The first region outside Tuscany was not the obvious one. Calabria came in 2022, with Giovanna — a booking agent who has been with us for years, lives in the region and is building the Calabria product herself. It remains one of the least operated regions in Italy: few companies keep their own cars, drivers and relationships on the ground this far south, and fewer still know which of them hold up in August.
That is exactly why it is on our list. The coast at Tropea and Scilla, the forests of the Sila, the Greek bronzes in Reggio Calabria, and ingredients — bergamot, chilli, the red onion — that exist nowhere else in quite the same way. A region like this only works with someone who lives in it, and it would not have happened without her.
A partnership, and Emilia-Romagna
In 2023 Martina and Laura Casolari went into partnership, and that is the point where a one-region operation became a company.
Emilia-Romagna came first — Bologna, Modena, Parma and the Motor Valley, where food and engineering sit side by side — with Umbria and Puglia after it, each with its own team on the ground, its own vehicles, its own producers.
Five names become one group
By 2026 there were five names doing the same thing in five territories. For a tour operator or a DMC building a trip that crossed three of them, that meant three conversations, three quotations and three sets of ground arrangements for what was really one job.
So we put them together. Bespoke Group is one team and one point of contact for incoming partners who need the local side handled properly — the vehicles, the drivers, the timings, the people who open the door. You send one request, and behind it the five teams still live where they work.