How to Make Travel Coaching Work With Your Current Role

Why Should I Become a Travel Coach? 

Whether you are a travel agent or tour operator, a life coach, a spiritual coach, a doctor, or any other field that loves empowering and inspiring, encouraging and helping others travel better and more effectively because you understand the power that travel has on your mind, body and soul, then ask yourself if you are incorporating coaching into your work. 

I have heard so many travel agents or advisors say, “If I'm already helping people overcome their fears around travel, why do I need to learn to become a travel coach?” Well, you see, travel coaching is far more than coaching people on how to travel. It's also a lot more than just overcoming travel fears or figuring out travel budgets. Everyone comes from different backgrounds, and there are countless ways to integrate travel coaching into different roles.

I have seen doctors, pharmacists, physicians, lawyers, corporate executives and of course, travel agents and all sorts of coaches join The Travel Coach Network community. Travel coaching is about developing a business that combines your love of helping others, communities, businesses, and/or the planet with your specific skills, interests and expertise in travel. It is about having a deeper understanding of how beneficial travel is to our personal and work lives. 

Travel Advisors

If you're a travel agent, some examples of what you can be doing to incorporate coaching into how you work with your clients are to really take a look at that pre-trip assessment and ask the right questions. It's about flipping the mindset when it comes to travel. It's not about clients always coming to you saying, “I'm ready to take a trip. This is where I want to go.”

As a travel expert, you should be inspiring, encouraging, and empowering people to travel more often, to think about places they've never been before, to think about why they need to travel even when they feel like they “don't have time”, or that it's “not that important”. You understand the power of travel. Some things to consider in your pre-trip assessment might be: Where does this desire for travel come from? Why are you feeling overwhelmed in your personal life or your work life? Why do you feel unfulfilled in life? Why are you feel like you need a boost of confidence? Where does this stem from? 

When you can figure out the answers to these underlying and motivating factors for travel or travel triggers and when you can understand where these are stemming from, you can help people better plan their trips. Maybe your client is a busy mom who is feeling overwhelmed and needs some time to herself. In this case, you probably wouldn’t recommend she go to a busy touristy place. Maybe she needs a more natural environment where she can recharge. This is more of the concept that I'm talking about when it comes to travel. It isn't just about knowing the logistics of a destination, like the great restaurants and the great tours and the great museums and the architecture.  It's flipping the script and looking at the client, and asking, what is the transformation, what is the outcome? What is the feeling you want and need and crave and desire when you return from your trip? That answer can help you decide what they need to do during their trip. Travel coaching combined with travel advising is a way for you to provide a holistic service to your clients that addresses their emotional, mental and logistical needs. 

Photo Courtesy: UnSplash

Tour Operators

As a tour operator, you might assume that everyone is on a tour because they have similar interests, however, their underlying reasons for being there are likely to vary. What can this experience really provide these individuals with? Travel means something different for everyone. Instead of generalizing a tour based on the experience that they're having or the actions that they're taking during it or whatever the cold hard facts of the itinerary are, think more along the lines of how this going to benefit these individuals based on what they need as human beings. We all have different struggles, health issues, mindsets, fears, and personalities. It is important to create that added level of service and understanding so you can offer your travelers a much more personalized experience.

When you take a look at marketing, companies as a whole understand people's behavior. Tour operators need to consider factors like their clients’ purchasing behaviors, who they follow online and why. What about that account is attractive and desirable to them? Is it because they really desire to quit their corporate job that they've been in for so long? Are they looking for a more freedom-based lifestyle? What does freedom mean to them? That is more of what travel coaching is about rather than the logistics of planning and booking a trip.

Life & Spiritual Coaches

As a life coach, you already help people live the best life that they can live. If they have a passion for travel, how can they incorporate that? And why? What can travel do for them? Not everyone's a travel expert. Not everyone knows how they can benefit from travel. They might not know just how powerful travel can be. When I started traveling at 22 years old, I hadn't been anywhere before. I had an inkling that I needed to travel, that travel would help me figure out my path in life somehow, but I didn't understand just how powerful it was. 

So as a life coach, how can travel be integrated into your work? How can you help your clients spend more time outdoors, get outside of their comfort zone, meet other people, learn something new, or even boost their confidence? 

It’s the same thing with a spiritual coach - travel is almost synonymous with spirituality, right? We all go on such different spiritual journeys, but they all allow us to learn something new about ourselves. 

Therapists & Doctors

 A lot of people in the medical field have been integrating travel into their services. Prescribing travel or time in nature may seem like a very hippy concept, but research supports the benefits of both. There are tons of studies out there on just how beneficial soaking and breathing in fresh air can be on your mental health. 

Photo Courtesy: UnSplash

Start strengthening your ideas, mission, vision and messaging with research. I tell my members of the certification program that it is one thing to believe in something, but it is another to find proof of it, especially if you come from the medical world. 

As a Wellness Travel Coach, I studied the mental, physical, physiological, emotional, social, intellectual, professional, and wellness benefits of travel for years. Filter through what is applicable to you and your ideal client and use it to educate them and market your messaging. 

Travel Managers

A Travel Manager is like a travel coordinator of a company with additional responsibilities such as monitoring travel policies and budgets. If you are a Travel Manager, think about how you can gain a deeper understanding of your travelers. There was a big burnout epidemic among road warriors or business travelers pre-pandemic. How can you get to know them and what they actually want and need? How can you provide them with the best service and the best options and opportunities to make the most of their trip so they can be the most productive and the most creative version of themselves? How can you help them land those sales and build those relationships? Think about all of those intentions for why they go on a trip in the first place for business. 

One of the fundamentals of travel coaching is helping your clients set intentions for their trips. You need to understand them on a human level - consider what they need and where those motivating factors and those cravings for travel come from. 

I know that when I started traveling, I'd come back home and dive right back into my busy lifestyle working in a restaurant. I made no time for myself other than working two or three shifts a day because I want to make money, but that wasn't great for my mental health. I would daydream about where I wanted to travel next and I found that I really needed time to myself. I needed something that made me happy. I needed something that I knew I worked for and deserved. Those were some of my underlying factors. 

Think About Your Ideal Clients

Think about your ideal clients, maybe what they are looking for is similar to your past experiences or your past feelings or your past life, whatever it might be. Maybe you know how powerful travel can be in helping people heal from loss - maybe the loss of a loved one or the loss of a pet, experiencing a breakup, or leaving the corporate world, finally taking the risk and leaving it. Maybe your client wants to incorporate more travel and prioritize self-care and their vacation time while working in the corporate world. 

Whatever it is that your background is, take a look at that and ask yourself, why am I even passionate about this? Why do I believe in travel in the first place? Incorporate that into how you work with your clients, from setting intentions for their trip to asking the right questions, especially pre-trip. Ask them questions like, “how do you want to feel upon your return? What keeps you up at night? What does your ideal experience look like? Who's the person you wish you were? What kind of life do you wish you had?” These are the types of questions you should start asking and there's a whole list that I incorporate into The Travel Coach Certification Program.

Going Beyond Logistics and Standing Out

During the trip, how are you going to support your clients? And I'm not talking about whether they have flight cancellations and all those things that travel agents deal with. 

During this trip, maybe your clients are sticking to their old ways and not branching out of their comfort zones and talking to people. Maybe they stay in their room more often than they should be instead of exploring the local markets. Maybe they got intimidated because they don't speak the language or they're not going off the beaten path as you guys planned together that they should. 

How do you continue that support during the trip and post-trip as well? Is there continuing support that you offer? Are there other offers and services that they can follow up with? Is there a group opportunity or group trip that you can do? 

This is about more than just the old tradition of planning and booking a trip, making sure they're okay during the trip, and hoping they rebook with you. Travel is personal. The travel industry has lacked depth for so long, despite being such a people-oriented space. Travel coaching adds that humanization to it and it helps your business as a whole. 

If you want people to come back for more, if you want them to spread word of mouth, and if you want them to work with you again, make them feel good. Think about this: when you look at social media, why do you go back to the same people? They make you feel something. You leave reality for a minute, you have emotional ties to them. It is the same thing when it comes to businesses. Why do you buy certain products to buy all the time? They make you feel good. How do they make you feel good and why? 

The Keys to Successful Travel Coaching

Rethink how you're actually working with clients and how you can enrich those experiences. Some clients may have to reflect on the past and put emphasis on their future. As a coach, you should be assessing where these needs and feelings come from as well as what your clients’ paths could look like.

Many people travel to help them deal with things like trauma, childhood abuse, or terrible relationships. These are examples of reflecting on the past in order to understand where this desire to travel comes from. But as a travel coach, you should be emphasizing how great the future can be, how a travel experience can really help shape them into who they are, the life they need to have and how different their life could be. Putting that emphasis on the future versus sticking solely to the past, being an active listener, and creating a safe space for your clients is crucial. It's not about suggesting or advising where people should go and what they should do and what they should eat and what restaurant they should go to. 

It's about listening to them as a coach, no matter what kind of coach you are. It's about pulling answers from within. It's about helping them find the potential within themselves. Think about a basketball coach. They aren't just telling people how to play basketball. They're coaching them to unlock their greatest potential and to be the best that they can be because it's within them. It's the same thing when it comes to travel coaching. You can have the best life that you want. Your dream life, your ideal dream life, your ideal work life, your ideal family life, your ideal personal life, whatever it might be, can be pulled from within. 

What is it that they're looking for? What is it that they need? Create a safe space for them, build trust and reliability and comfort so they can open up and they can share what is coming up for them. Ask them why they really want to travel so you can get to the root of their “why” other than just that they prefer to go to Italy. Why there? Why travel? Why anything? A lot of these concepts are stemming from the International Coaching Federation, which is the federation that accredited The Travel Coach Certification Program. 

Spark a desire for greater understanding, clarity, and awareness too. Make them aware of their desire for travel - they may not know it's more than just going to sip piña coladas on a beach. A trip is far more than that, so understand and bring clarity to their path. 

Coaching is about helping your client reach within and pull out their own feelings, thoughts, needs and realizations. Help your clients discover their new beliefs, thoughts, perceptions, emotions and moods then empower them to take action and make decisions that are necessary. 

Express useful and purposeful insight to your travelers. Help your travelers think further and deeper to new perspectives that inspire a shift in viewpoints and new possibilities for actions. Oftentimes when I hear travel experts online asked questions like, “Why do you want to help people travel? Or how beneficial is travel to you and your ideal audience?” They say things like, “To learn about new cultures, to understand other ways of living, to hear other belief systems.” 

Exactly! So why is that important? Identifying these other viewpoints and these other possibilities in life, why is that important to them and how can it benefit them? Help your travelers identify, realize, and interpret what they do, why they do what they do, why they want what they want, and why they need what they need. Help them identify the factors that affect them and their current or past behaviors, including their thoughts, feelings, well-being, and history. 

Ask your travelers to identify the difference between minor and major issues as well as isolated situations versus reoccurring behaviors. Something to think about is, is this whole journey applicable to just a part of my life or my whole life as a whole? Is it all in my personal life? Is it all my work life that I wish there was a change for? Is it an isolated situation that I'm looking to change? Maybe it's a personal skill or it's to break outside of their comfort zone and learn to communicate more with people and to hear new stories, whatever it might be that their intentions are. 

Photo Courtesy: UnSplash

Through your sessions and your resources, identify your traveler's strengths as well as their areas for learning and growth and figure out what is most important to address during a coaching session. Whether it's a coaching session or you do group coaching or you create courses or programs or consulting or whatever it might be that you do, I always emphasize that travel coaching isn't only about one-on-one sessions. 

Like I said before, travel coaching helps with your marketing, designing your offers, understanding your ideal clients and audience and attracting them versus chasing them all the time. And why? It is because you understand them on a human level, and that's what marketing takes.

It's not about the generic beautiful beach pictures and saying, “look how pretty this destination is.” There are countless places in the world that people could travel to that are beautiful, that have great architecture and different cultures and different languages and all the things that we describe that people should experience. They all have it. So how do you set places apart, your services apart and your business apart from others? It's about getting to know your ideal audience on a human level, speaking to that and letting them know that you understand where they are in life and what it is they're really looking for because 1. either you've been there and 2. you've listened and you’re implementing your work and your resources into whatever offers it is you create. Those are up to you and will depend on your area of interest. I'm not going to hold one on one coaching sessions outside of my certification program because I don't enjoy that. I want to scale my business, but some people don’t. 

So ask yourself, how do you want to create revenue streams? It's not necessarily about thinking about what are others doing or how you can model your business after someone else’s. Ask yourself, what is it that you enjoy doing? No matter what kind of business you build, it should be a business that you enjoy working in every day. 

Be sure to follow us on Instagram at @thetravelcoachnetwork or learn more about us www.thetravelcoachnetwork.com and send us a hello. We look forward to having you in our free TCN Global Community on Facebook. Don't forget to grab your Free Beginner's Guide to Travel Coaching as well!

 If you know anyone who may be interested in travel coaching, please be sure to send them our way to our podcast. We truly appreciate it. 

Want to watch this episode? Click here. Want to listen to this episode? Click here.