By Kjeld Schigt, Founder of Kalon Surf
Starting around 2004, my brother and I made a deal: every year, we’d go somewhere together to surf and practice Spanish. It became our thing. We’re very different people — he’s a doctor, I’m in business — and we weren’t particularly close growing up in the Netherlands. But as we got older, we found common ground in the water. Same level of surfing, same love of good food, same interest in language. He tends to pack every hour of a trip with activity. I’m more the type to balance it out — active in the morning, relaxed in the afternoon, social at dinner but with space to be alone when I want.
That combination of energy and ease is essentially what Kalon Surf became. I just didn’t know it yet.
The Question That Started Everything
In 2010, I left my corporate job at BP. I’d spent years working across multinationals — Heineken, Unilever, BP — living in different countries, always on the move. I was doing job interviews, but nothing felt right. I kept thinking about going back to a surf school in Brazil that my brother and I had visited, but it had changed — it wasn’t as good as it used to be.
My mentor asked me a simple question: “What would you have done differently?”
I started describing it without thinking. The coaching should be more personal. The food should be exceptional, not an afterthought. The rooms should be comfortable enough that you actually want to spend time there. The whole thing should feel like someone thought about every detail so you don’t have to.
And then I realized: I was describing the experience I’d always wanted but never found. Not a backpacker surf camp. Not a resort where you happen to take a lesson. Something in between — structured enough that every day has purpose, relaxed enough that it never feels like a schedule.
I figured there were a lot of people like me. Late twenties, early thirties, working hard, traveling constantly, and looking for something that was active and social but also genuinely restorative. People who get restless sitting by a pool all day but don’t want to organize a complicated adventure trip either. People who enjoy meeting others in a natural way but also value their own space.
That’s how Kalon Surf was born. I started building it in 2010, launched in 2011, and we’ve been refining it every week since.
The Trip Starts Before the Trip
One thing that has always bothered me about travel is how stressful the booking process can be. You’re already busy — that’s the whole reason you need a vacation. The last thing you want is a complicated website, slow email responses, or unclear pricing.
So we built the experience to start the moment someone visits our site. The website should be straightforward — you should know exactly what you’re getting without having to dig. When someone sends us an email, we respond quickly, because we know they’re fitting this into a lunch break or a late evening after work. And if Kalon isn’t the right fit, we tell them honestly and fast so they can look elsewhere without wasting time.
Once someone books, our concierge team takes over. Their job is simple: make the guest feel like the only thing they have to do is get on the plane. They answer questions quickly, they anticipate needs by reading between the lines, and they handle every logistic detail — transport, dietary preferences, room setup, schedule questions — before the guest has to ask.
Even at the airport, we’ve thought about it. Our driver finds you. You don’t have to navigate a crowd of people holding signs and shouting names. It sounds like a small thing, but after a long flight, it matters.
Fifteen Years of Getting Better at the Same Thing
Since 2011, we’ve hosted thousands of guests. The core hasn’t changed — surf coaching, great food, a small group, a beautiful property, and a team that genuinely cares about your week. But the details have gotten sharper every year.
The coaching evolved into a structured method with a 3:1 guest-to-coach ratio, daily video analysis, and boards matched to each guest’s level. The food went from good to genuinely world-class with the help of Rodrigo Montesinos (guest of Kalon, and also Michelin trained Chef) — our chefs use sous vide and molecular techniques with locally sourced ingredients, and guests regularly say the dining rivals restaurants they’ve been to back home. We partnered with Firewire Surfboards. We added yoga, coffee tastings, a cooking class, included massage. We built the property we always imagined — ocean-view suites, an infinity pool overlooking the Pacific, open-air dining where every sunset feels like an event.
But the thing I’m most proud of is harder to see. It’s the way our team reads a room. The coach who notices you’re frustrated and adjusts without making it awkward. The house manager who remembers how you take your coffee. The chef who quietly adapts a dish because they picked up on something you mentioned in passing. None of this is scripted. It comes from people who’ve been with us for years and take personal pride in the week you’re having.
Why People Like You (and Me) Keep Looking for This
I built Kalon because I was the target guest. I was someone who worked hard, traveled a lot, and needed a reset that actually worked — not just a change of scenery, but a change of pace. Something that combined physical challenge, good food, interesting people, and the space to just breathe.
I think that need has only grown. More people today are in the position I was in at 28 — busy, ambitious, slightly burned out, and suspicious of vacations that promise relaxation but deliver boredom. They don’t want to sit still for a week. But they also don’t want to plan every minute of a trip. They want someone to have thought about it for them, done it well, and left room for the experience to unfold naturally.
That’s what we do. Nearly every week of the year. And honestly, after fifteen years, we’re still finding ways to do it better.
If that sounds like what you’ve been looking for, take a look at what a week looks like on our experience page, see what guests are saying on TripAdvisor and Google Reviews, or get in touch and we’ll take it from there.
