A travel coach wears lots of hats including cheerleader, guide, liaison, and more. For many people, combining travel coaching with their current role allows them to play off their existing strengths, passions and experiences. 

“I'm a psychologist, a neurolinguistic NLP practitioner. Coaching has always been a passion of mine and I have a growth mindset, always learning and improving. And my other big passion is travel. When I discovered travel coaching, I was like, oh my God, this actually exists?! This is a profession?! Once I brought these two passions together, everything made sense.” - Sonia Cruz Oro, The Travel Coach Network Podcast | Episode 16

Choosing this route can be a great way for new travel business owners to create a foundation that helps them gain clarity on their niche and offerings. If you are wondering about blending travel coaching with a specific career, check out this article we wrote about how to make travel coaching work with...

The Travel Coach Network podcast is your weekly dose of travel coach info, inspo and news from around the globe. Tune in to each episode to hear inspiring stories of successful travel coaches who are building their lives and business around travel, all while exploring the world. You'll also learn all about travel coaching, setting intentions for your trip, adding meaning to travel, and how you can grow your own travel coaching business. Because remember, there is more to a travel career than just blogging and booking. Now join us as we reshape how and why people travel. 

There are so many travel programs out there, so what makes The Travel Coach Certification Program different from the rest? Read on to find out!

1. The focus is on travel coaching rather than planning.

Other programs focus on things like how to become a travel agent, how to sell travel, how to market travel, how to book wellness experiences and more. Again, there are so many different types of programs out...

At the Travel Coach Network, we are proud to offer support and guidance to incredible travel entrepreneurs who are reshaping the industry. We encourage our members to get their names and businesses out there, speak up about what they believe in when it comes to the power of travel, and carve their own paths. 

Getting In Our Own Way

Unfortunately, so many of us hold ourselves back before we even have the chance to get started. This is often due to our limiting beliefs that create the conditions for imposter syndrome. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines imposter syndrome as “the persistent doubt concerning one's abilities or accomplishments accompanied by the fear of being exposed as a fraud despite evidence of one's ongoing success”. This can hold us back from pursuing new opportunities and reaching our goals. If any of the following thoughts have crossed your mind at some point, you have probably experienced imposter syndrome. 

Who am I to offer these...

Figuring out your niche is an important task for new travel business owners. At The Travel Coach Network, we encourage our travel coaches to find niches that resonate with their personal passions and experiences. 

We recently partook in some informal research where we gathered answers from our Travel Coach Certification Members form and comments on a Facebook post to uncover some of the most commonly mentioned travel coaching niches that people have chosen. 

If you have been having trouble getting clarity on your niche, perhaps this list will give you a little inspiration. If your niche is mentioned below, read on to learn more about how you can make it your own!

The Top Five Travel Coach Niches 

5. Family Travel

Coming in at number five is family travel. The most popular answers included travel with kids and multigenerational and adoptive family travel. 

4. Study/Move Abroad

Travel coaches who are specializing in studying or moving abroad tend to focus on...

As travel professionals, we hear the term “travel experience” all the time. Often when I ask travel professionals, “What are you doing? What is it that you do with your clients? What are you looking to provide them with?”, they say, “a memorable travel experience, creating a great experience, having an experience of a lifetime.” So “experience” is always in there, but what does that actually mean? What is an experience?

Ultimately, you want those repeat clients who will talk about your company with their friends, their family, their coworkers and on social media. In order to attract travelers and keep them coming back for more, it’s going to take a lot more effort and meaning than simply just promoting travel the same way as everyone else. Because yes, everyone wants to travel to some extent and there are all the clients in the world because who doesn't want to go on a trip? 

But still, many travel professionals struggle to...

It’s that time of year when people see a fresh start in front of them and are inundated with travel trend reports as well as the hottest new destinations to go to. 

With a new calendar year ahead of us, the idea of a fresh start and the unknown is exciting. It is easy to say you want to travel somewhere new this year, get out of your comfort zone or wander solo, but how many of us actually follow through on these goals? 

A 2021 Forbes article states that nearly 80% of people admit to abandoning their New Year’s resolutions by February. The article suggests that we should set New Year’s goals instead of resolutions. The former encourages action through manageable steps to achieving what you set out to do, while the latter simply refers to stating a decision to do something. 

When it comes to setting travel goals for the new year, travel coaches are well-equipped to support people in individualized capacities. How exactly might they do that? Well,...

When it comes to deciding to start a travel business, it’s easy to glamorize it. Creating your own schedule, being your own boss and not having to answer to anyone sounds amazing, right? 

The reality is that entrepreneurship can be a really lonely venture, especially when done remotely in a people-oriented industry like Tourism & Hospitality. It’s only natural that travel business owners long for a support system as they face their day-to-day challenges. 

A support system usually evolves through a community and network. So, what’s the difference between the two and why do entrepreneurs need both? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines community as “a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests”, whereas a network can be described as “a usually informally interconnected group or association of persons (such as friends or professional colleagues)”. 

Through the...

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...

Growing Up, Family Travels and Going to College

I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as an only child with a single mom. Vacations to us looked like my entire family (aunts, uncles and cousins included!) piling into the family van and driving from Milwaukee down to the southern tip of Texas to visit my grandmother, then going over the border to visit her family in Mexico. The only other trip I remember taking was driving from Wisconsin up across the Canadian border to visit my grandfather's family in Montreal. But because I was so young, I don’t remember most of that. I wasn't in a family that talked about travel so it just wasn't something I thought about. 

I grew up in a lower-middle-class family, so money was often tight. Sometimes we would use food pantries in the hopes of finding something to eat for dinner. Because my mom worked a lot, I would stay with my grandparents often and if I didn't eat there, I wasn't going to have food until the next day. I grew up watching...

By: Shelley Roes

Making a decision to sell everything we owned and to set off on a travel adventure was an easy one for us, but our friends said we were brave – and crazy! During our travels, so many people we’ve met have said that our life is their dream, or that they plan to do what we are doing …one day.

What we did wasn’t anything special but taking that leap into a life of travel and leaving your comfort zone behind you, can be difficult for some.

There is also a notion that travel is expensive, which is why many people put off their travel dreams until they are either retired or they enjoy a few weeks a year somewhere which has taken them the whole year to save for.

So, what made us decide to take the leap? One afternoon we sat down with a blank piece of paper to brainstorm all the things we wanted to do in life. As it turned out, we wanted to see the world. We’re not sure who said it first, but we saw the same realisation in each other’s...