Portugal Expert: Couples, Family & Group Travel

Dan and his agency have been featured in USA Today, PBS, Rick Steves, and Euro Business News. He assisted with location planning for Game of Thrones and has consulted with Travel Channel and MTV in Spain.As a teenager, Dan worked in his father’s law firm, running documents to other attorneys for trial preparation at the Fifth Circuit Court in New Orleans. He also grew up hearing tales about Europe and his father’s family.The attention to detail stuck. So did a curiosity about the beautiful historic places, diverse people, food, and cultures beyond the courthouse — and eventually, he found a career that demanded both.

After graduating university and a few years in a corporate job, Dan worked with a leading cruise line from Miami for a year — and realized that fluency in Spanish would open doors. So he flew to South America to study and travel. He later traveled widely — vineyards and castles across Western Europe, Morocco, and Asia — but when he reached Spain and Portugal, the curiosity became something deeper. So did a Spanish woman who would become his wife.

Dan is the founder of Magical Private Travel, an American-run luxury travel agency specializing in bespoke private journeys across Spain, Portugal, and Morocco since 2002 — with more than 15,000 travelers served, a commitment to positive local impact, and recognition from the Luxury Lifestyle Awards and the European Travel Awards.

While big-box travel companies sell fifty or more countries from offices in New York or London, Dan’s team brings something local agencies can’t: American leadership with a Spanish, Portuguese, and Moroccan team on the ground — the best of both worlds, with two decades of trusted relationships across all three destinations.

His network across Spain, Portugal, and Morocco reads less like a vendor list and more like a life: Rioja and Douro winemakers, Basque and Lisbon chefs, Alentejo cork estate owners, Moroccan artisans, Seville flamenco guitarists, the owner of a purebred Andalusian stallion estate, and the family behind a medieval castle in Jaén.

An Irish-American expat who has called Europe home for more than twenty-five years and traveled across five continents, Dan lives with his Spanish wife and son between Spain and Portugal. He speaks fluent Spanish and still believes that when a journey is truly designed around you and your favorite people, it creates the stories you’ll still be talking and smiling about decades from now.