Paula Araya

Paula Araya’s career in tourism began at 19, when she joined Pan Am and discovered a world of travel, hospitality, and people from different cultures. More than 25 years later, that career has taken her across industries and continents, including five years in Budapest, where she worked in corporate relations and hotel sales for properties including Four Seasons and Aria Hotel Budapest.

Through all those moves, one thing has remained constant: Paula’s love of people. For her, hospitality is about making guests feel genuinely at home while helping them connect with the place they’ve traveled so far to experience. Today, as Assistant General Manager at Tierra Patagonia, that place happens to be what she calls “the end of the world,” surrounded by mountains, windswept landscapes, and wildlife.

For Paula, the guest experience begins the moment the lobby doors open. She wants arrivals to feel less like checking into a hotel and more like entering somewhere that has been thoughtfully prepared for them. From there, her hope is that guests venture beyond those doors and experience Patagonia for themselves, connecting with the scale and wildness of the landscape.

After a career spent welcoming people in places around the world, Paula feels particularly grateful to have landed here. “Living alongside this environment and witnessing its beauty every day is truly remarkable,” she says. “I feel profoundly grateful that life has brought me here.”