The name
In Kapampangan, alaya means dawn — and east, the direction the sun chooses first. It’s the hour before a place has fully decided what it wants to be, when the light is still soft, and everything feels possible.
In Sanskrit, and in Buddhist thought, ālaya means dwelling — an abode, a place of rest. It’s the root behind “Himalaya,” the abode of snow. And in ālaya-vijñāna, it names the foundational layer of consciousness, the quiet keeper of every experience a person has ever had. Not a hotel you check out of. A place where a life settles and stays.
In Arabic, words built on this sound speak of what is high, noble, and sublime — worth the reaching.
Something in you wakes up. Something in you settles in and is changed by what it saw. And if you stayed long enough and went deep enough, something in you comes back a little more sublime for having gone.
Pronounced Ah-LAH-yah.
Why we built it
Merald spends his weekdays as an operations head in tech, the version of himself that plans and systemises and makes sure things run on schedule. Mirjan spends hers in the aisle of an aeroplane, having seen more airports and more time zones than almost anyone we know. We’ve been best friends for years, and travellers for longer.
Somewhere along the way, we both noticed the same thing: the trips that actually changed us were never the fast ones. They were the ones where we stayed a little longer than the itinerary called for. Where we ate the meal that wasn’t on any list because someone’s cousin insisted. Where a place stopped being a photo and started being somewhere we, briefly, belonged.
That’s what we wanted to build. Not another tour company racing to add more countries to a brochure, but one built around arrival — the dawn kind, and the dwelling kind, and, if we do this right, the noble kind too.
We’re starting here, in the Philippines, with people like us — professionals who’ve spent years watching the world through a screen and a window seat, and who are finally ready to actually arrive somewhere. But this was never meant to stay small in spirit, only in group size. Wherever you’re reading this from: come dwell with us for a while.
— Merald & Mirjan
Mission
Travel should mean something by the time you land back home.
We don’t believe in visiting thirty landmarks in one day just so you can post it and forget the experience two years later. We want to make sure you’re never the same person who walked in.
Our vision is to become Southeast Asia’s most trusted name in curated, transformative travel — known not for how many places we go, but for how deeply we go there.
Merald Ayson
Managing DirectorChief Route Architect
merald@alayatours.com
Mirjan Hipolito
Head of Brand & Customer GrowthChief Charm Officer
mirjan@alayatours.com