Dawn Bartizal

Jean Melcher Travel
Bend, OR | La Jolla, CA

Hours of Operation
Monday through Friday,
9:00am-5:00pm PST and by appointment.

Dawn Bartizal is a travel advisor with Jean Melcher Travel, affiliated with Cruise and Travel Experts (CTE), a member of Signature Travel Network. After a successful executive career in pharmaceutical regulatory affairs, Dawn returned to her first professional love — travel — building on experience she gained during an earlier stint in the industry. The precision, attention to detail, and comfort managing complex, multi-party logistics she honed in regulatory affairs now shape the way she plans every trip for her clients — anticipating problems before they arise, tracking every detail, and keeping every moving piece on track from booking to return home. She brings a rare combination of meticulous planning skill and genuine, firsthand wanderlust to every itinerary she creates.

Dawn's specialties reflect the way she herself travels: actively, purposefully, and with curiosity. She has explored New Zealand extensively across multiple visits, including sections of all four major Great Walks, gone on safari across Africa, explored the islands of the South Pacific, and completed the Camino de Santiago — walking 120 kilometers of the Portuguese route. Her love for the water has taken her sailing across the Seychelles, the Greek Islands, Turkey, Tahiti, Tonga, and multiple Caribbean islands, canal boating through the French countryside, and cruising to destinations around the globe. This firsthand experience across so many styles of travel — active, nautical, cultural, and everything in between — gives Dawn an instinct for matching each client to the right trip, not just the right destination. Her passion for wellness and pilgrimage-style travel, active and experiential adventures, and off-the-beaten-path exploration further shapes the kind of trips she loves to design, whether that's a multi-generational family journey, a milestone celebration, or a solo traveler's next great adventure.

Dawn's current projects showcase the range of her work: a multi-family journey to Rome and the Amalfi Coast, and a 12-traveler group trip through Brazil's Paraty, Rio de Janeiro, and the wildlife-rich Pantanal and Bonito regions. She also brings hands-on experience with Nordic sauna culture and a growing specialty in polar and remote expedition cruises.

Dawn also brings a genuine understanding of solo travelers, drawn from her own experience welcoming them into her group trips. She knows that solo travelers often have different needs and priorities — from room configurations to feeling connected within a larger group — and she takes care to plan with those needs in mind. Whether someone is joining a multi-family journey or a larger group adventure on their own, Dawn makes sure they feel just as considered and supported as those traveling with a partner or family.

Based between Bend, Oregon and La Jolla, California, Dawn approaches every client relationship with the same care she brings to her own adventures — asking thoughtful questions, planning down to the logistical details, and staying personally invested in how a trip unfolds. Whether she's arranging a family reunion abroad, a solo traveler's dream itinerary, or a large group expedition, Dawn's goal is the same: to craft travel that's not just well-organized, but genuinely transformative.