We were lucky to catch up with Katie Dillon recently and have shared our conversation below.

Katie, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

I am a fan of technology and AI for productivity but in the travel planning space, there isn’t anything that can replace human relationships. In fact, I think that people don’t understand the value of this because so much of it happens behind the scenes when we work with suppliers on the client’s behalf in a way that AI or big companies like AMEX or Expedia can’t.

For example, things happen like bad weather, flight delays, and illnesses in the family, and there are times when you need someone to step in and go to bat for you. I recently had a client who was an expecting mom, taking a holiday with her mom and young child before the new baby arrived. A hurricane was en route nearby. Her Mexico resort wasn’t directly in the hurricane’s path, though the weather did look like it was going to be unpredictable, and I understood why a change was necessary even though her cancelation policy clearly stated that no changes were allowed. Because of my relationship with the hotel and, I was able to help the client move her reservation a few weeks forward when she felt more comfortable traveling.

On the flip side, I heard from a client at a Maui hotel that she received a massive room upgrade from a base room to one with direct pool access that her kids loved. The hotel told her it was because of her travel advisor. And that made a huge impact on her vacation.

Other travel advisors can work magic like this so these things are not exclusive to me, but it does show that because I have relationships with people inside hotels, tour companies, etc. that we can create long lists of customer success stories.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Most of this is from my about page – https://lajollamom.com/about/

Katie Dillon launched La Jolla Mom in 2009, following her family’s return to La Jolla after living as expats in London and Hong Kong—where she lived at Four Seasons Hong Kong.

Readers quickly began seeking Katie’s family travel advice on planning their trips to San Diego, known for its (almost) year-round sunshine, family-friendly attractions, and world-class theme parks. To serve her readers better, Katie formed La Jolla Living, LLC in 2011, formally turning La Jolla Mom into a dedicated travel business.

In 2017, to help make San Diego vacations more affordable, we partnered with San Diego-based aRes Travel to offer legitimate discounted tickets to popular local attractions like LEGOLAND California, San Diego Zoo, and SeaWorld as well as other major theme parks like Disneyland and Universal Orlando.

Our hotel booking services grew naturally from Katie’s extensive personal hotel reviews and a strategic partnership in 2019 with Cadence Travel (a Virtuoso® agency), also headquartered in La Jolla, providing readers VIP perks thousands of luxury hotels globally.

While our name still reflects our original roots in motherhood and local experiences, our expertise, partnerships, and personalized service have evolved to provide travel solutions trusted by millions each year.

Why We’re Different
No one knows San Diego travel quite like we do. Our founder, Katie Dillon, personally advises thousands of travelers annually, maintains direct relationships with local hotels and attractions, and is the top referrer to several luxury properties in the County.

Our tech-forward hotel booking tools provide immediate access to exclusive VIP perks and preferred rates. Yet we are still very much a human-powered business. Our expert team personally reviews every reservation for accuracy. Theme park ticket clients benefit from dedicated phone and email support through aRes Travel—we can help facilitate requests as well.

Beyond hotels and tickets, we share authentic insights into San Diego’s best beaches, restaurants, shopping, and things to do—even those we don’t book. Our extensive network includes hotel concierges, local businesses, attraction staff, and a community of over 2,000 clients who provide first-hand experience and insider intel in San Diego and other popular destinations worldwide. They help shape the content on this site.

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What differentiates what I do from the general travel blog or advisor is it’s truly our insider network or hive mind, if you will, that allows our team to deliver the best recommendations and service no matter where you’re headed. I don’t accept free stays when I review hotels. I did in the past but what I found was that my readers didn’t resonate with that content and you can’t really review a hotel unless you’re spending your own money and comparing it to other similar hotels that you’re spending your own money on. This is why I think people need to be wary of social media influencers who accept free stays in exchange for content.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’ve had to pivot the business several times and I am currently in the middle of a giant pivot just like anyone else with a website that generates leads from search engine traffic. My website used to make the bulk of the income for my business (and fortunately allowed me to invest in technology and hiring help when it did) through ads and affiliate sales.

The hard truth is that search traffic is likely to be a thing of the past. You must have alternative revenue. I think every business should have a blog so that people can understand more about what you do and what your core values are and the problems that you can solve. But I would never recommend that anyone start a content site exclusively to rely on search engine traffic. I was lucky that I always had a second source of revenue as a travel advisor. I’m different in that I focus mostly on really nice hotels versus planning cruises or building trips from A to Z (but we do have resources and people to do this for our clients who stay on after booking their first hotel).

Over the last few years, the traffic to my website has taken a pretty big hit. For a few years before that I luckily focused on building our hotel booking service. We have client facing tools where people can book luxury hotels with benefits only accessible to a select group of travel advisors. I am a part of this group. This means that if people are looking for certain hotels, they don’t have to wait for me to quote them with my benefits anymore. They can log into our tools a midnight and book the hotel they’d like with our perks and sometimes special rates.

So the pivot is focusing less on website content and more on building a client base who likes to book their own hotels with extra perks. And what I mean by perks is daily breakfast for two, room upgrades, USD 100 hotel credits and the like at no extra cost. They get that because I have access to it.

Another part of the pivot was investing, even though the costs still feel a bit uncomfortable, in a more efficient tech stack that allows me to have more efficient workflow. The business runs more efficiently and will get even more efficient to the point where I can bring on more people. There are so many tools out there like Notion and Clickup and Hubspot that you can customize to fit your use case. But there is a lot of trial and error and you might need to bite the bullet and hire help though I did spend time on demos and tutorials to really figure out what will work and what won’t. An efficient tech stack has changed my business because I’m going to be able to bring on more people an expand because we have SOPs now in writing instead of everything being in my brain. It’s still a work in progress and probably always will be.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think I’ve been a great beneficiary of timing and luck. I built a blog in the late 2000s when it was just becoming a thing. I stuck with what I thought people would search for and less about me, genuinely more interested in helping people. I stay out of controversial issues. I do have a strong local following by email and on social media so I’m asked to get involved in local political issues or online causes. I don’t. I stay as neutral as possible. I don’t change my opinion because someone gave me something for free (which lately we don’t accept). It is becoming difficult and isn’t always possible, and this is one of the reasons why 2025 is the year of efficiency for me, but I want to reply to all of my emails and direct messages. I like taking to people and showcasing San Diego or my favorite hotels.

I think I’ve just been around for a long time, neutral, and people are used to me being a stable place to go for advice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lajollamom.com