Ms Spice is the owner of Touch of Spice, a luxury concierge company specialising in creating bespoke holidays for personal and corporate clients.
The company was recently selected as one of the world's best luxury travel experts by Conde Nast Traveller and Ms Spice was the only New Zealander to feature in a publication called The Experts, which was distributed with the April issue of Conde Nast Traveller magazine in the UK.
The book featured what it called ''exceptional individuals who can transform trips into adventures, who have the personal history and expertise, the stories and the access, to set them apart from all that is humdrum''.
''She can arrange heli-skiing escapades, diving in the magical Bay of Islands and personalised shopping tours in party spot Queenstown, followed by teeing off while teetering on a mountain ledge. She also holds the key to a catalogue of swanky, shiny yachts and luxury villas set in vineyards.''
Touch of Spice was launched in 2005, after Ms Spice had spent about a decade working on super-yachts around the world.
She returned to Queenstown quite often and fell in love with the resort. But she also identified a gap in the market - everything was geared towards ''backpackers, bungy-jumpers and burger bars'', and not the high-end clientele.
After leaving the super-yacht world, she found herself ''quite unemployable'' and it got to the point that if she had not done it then, she never would. However, she did know what she was capable of, she said.
She thought she would be working from home and have a couple of private clients but the business had grown much more than she had expected and it was now a full luxury travel concierge company.
It organised luxury accommodation - and now had a portfolio of private homes - provided personal concierge services and organised corporate events.
In 2009, Touch of Spice ranked 15th in the Deloitte Fast 50 awards for the country's fastest-growing companies. When she started, she encountered the ''typical tall poppy'' syndrome and some people commented that it was never going to work. Nobody else had been doing anything similar then, but there was now a lot of competition.
However, she believed nobody else provided the ''full service'' with staff available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It was a high expectation industry and the company was all about exceeding people's expectations, Ms Spice said.
Clients expected ''everything'' and ranged from government officials to celebrities and ''really wealthy people you've never heard of before''.
The company dealt mainly with mid to high-end clients, who had disposable income, liked to travel well, with everything taken care of. The secret was ''never say no'' and the key was to exceed expectations.
In the beginning, the business grew solely by word of mouth and it grew ''like crazy''. Initially, she worked by herself but now had a team of 12.
After a few years of working seven days a week, and around the clock, it was now much more manageable.
She had ''more of a life now'' than in the past eight years which was by choice. She could still be working ''crazy hours every day'', but had a great team, enabling her to achieve work-life balance.
Having the right staff, in such a business was ''incredibly critical'' and she took pride in having a team that ''eat, breathe and sleep it, like I do'', she said.
That ''never say no attitude'' was vital, as the company's clients would not think twice about calling on a Sunday, or at 10pm. Nor did they care if you were on holiday.
''You can't really have people that work for Touch of Spice that don't get that. That's just how it is. You've just got to have that never say no attitude and really love service,'' she said.
The business was now busier now than it had been in years.
Being able to work in Queenstown was ''definitely special'' and there were still lots of opportunities in the resort. It was ever-changing and there was always a lot going on.
The company's vision was to be ''the name on everyone's lips'' and she saw opportunities to get into other areas of luxury, broadening its market in the future.
Ms Spice said she did not stop to look at what she had done, preferring instead to think about what she was going to do.
She was still doing it and was ''nowhere finished'', in fact she did not know where the end was, she said.
She remained passionate about the business and doing it well.
Balancing family life with work had been challenging over the years - she fell pregnant six weeks after starting the venture - but family time was now very important.
It was an exciting and interesting career and you never knew who was going to call, or what was going to be involved next. Every day was different, she got to live and work in Queenstown, enjoy the scenery and what the resort had to offer ''and we know more about it than most people'', she said.
