Travel Coaching: Active Listening, Effective Communication, and The Power of Human Connection

Clients want to feel and know that you are truly hearing what they have to say. It is your responsibility as the travel coach to focus completely on what your client is and isn't saying. This is important because in order to provide proper and effective advice and guidance, you need to fully understand your client's desires, self-expression, goals, fears, values, beliefs, and idea of possibilities.

As a travel coach, empowerment and personalization are key ingredients to your services which is why it is important that you encourage, accept, explore, and reinforce your client's unique perceptions, feelings, worries, beliefs, wellbeing, learning style, and ideas/suggestions. Then, with those ideas and suggestions of your client, build upon them and integrate them into how you see them moving forward and excelling towards their goals.

Asking the right questions is crucial. Go beneath the surface than the traditional logistics of a trip or a client’s past travel decisions and preferences. Remember, we are all different people each time that we go on a trip. Sometimes we are overworked and stressed out, the next we may be celebrating with our friends, another time could be coping with grief, and then next we may be looking for time alone.  Ask questions that spark self-discovery, insight, commitment, or action-taking such as questions that challenge your client's assumptions or thought process. The best way to display understanding and ensure clarity of what your client is saying is to summarize, paraphrase, and repeat back to them what they said.

One of greatest attributes of travel is human connection. Many of us travel for the benefits of human connection as we seek social interaction, a sense of belonging, feeling understood and accepted, hearing stories and creating our own stories, spending quality time with loved ones, building relationships, and strengthening bonds.

Working with clients is another form of human connection. Help your clients gain a better understanding of their need for human connection and how they can make confident decisions on how to include or improve human connection in their life. This could be helping them make an empowered decision on who to travel with, how to engage with people while traveling or in transport, the importance of immersing into other cultures, and how to implement and put that human connection into their personal needs and goals. 

Learn more about how you can enhance your listening and communication skills as a travel coach along with help people use travel as a powerful source for human connection, in The Travel Coach Certification Program: https://thetravelcoachnetwork.mykajabi.com/the-travel-coach-program