It started with a kitchen in Italy.

Michael discovered Italy the way most people do, by accident. A two-week trip stretched into three months. That led to a girl. The girl led to a marriage, and the marriage led to a deep love for Italian culture. Friends and family who visited in those early years got their first taste of what it actually means to live inside a place rather than pass through it.

Michael went on to build a well-known software company during the internet boom, but something was missing. He felt alive in Italy. And he kept wondering why that kind of experience, the kind that happens when you are genuinely inside a community rather than passing through it, almost never happens on organized travel. The answer, once he found it, was structural. Most operators are designed to extract. CDV was designed to belong.

In 2006, Michael and his wife Paola incorporated Culture Discovery Vacations and ran their first program: eight people, a farmhouse in central Italy, a few local families, and a wine harvest. Every person on that trip has been back at least once since.

For over twenty years, CDV ran exclusively leisure programs. We were good at it. Our TripAdvisor Hall of Fame standing, 1,250+ verified reviews, and 41% repeat rate are the evidence.

The decision to launch a MICE division was not a pivot - it was a recognition. Corporate groups have been showing up in our leisure programs for years. The team-building that happens when twelve colleagues cook a pasta dinner with a Tuscan grandmother is not accidental. It is structural. We built the conditions for it.

The only thing missing was the measurement layer. So we built one - from scratch - because nothing like it existed in the industry. Meridian is a proprietary AI-powered platform that tracks team transformation from psychometric baseline through up to 18 months post-program. We researched every major MICE platform on the market. Not one of them tracks participants past the post-event survey. Meridian tracks them through their full performance cycle. The transformation CDV has always produced is now proven, documented, and board-ready.