If you love to travel and would like to start your own business, you might be wondering if there is a way to merge the two. After all, so many people earn a living by traveling, why wouldn’t you become one of them?
Here are our seven ideas for travel enthusiasts looking to launch their own businesses, whether as a second income source or as a full-time career.
Become a Travel Blogger or Vlogger
The obvious choice of business for any travel enthusiast is one that involves sharing your travels with others.
To do this, you can become a travel blogger and write about your travels. Or, you can capture your adventures on camera and become a vlogger.
Getting started won’t cost a lot. You will need a decent phone or camera, and if you are going down the blogging route, you will need to buy a domain name and hosting.
After that, it’s all about creating the kind of content your audience will be interested in, which will mean traveling a lot. You can easily find cheap flights to destinations all over the world and enjoy every minute of your new venture.
Become a House or Pet Sitter
If you want to earn some extra money to travel the world without having to commit to a whole new career or side gig, why not try house-sitting or pet-sitting?
This can be a great way to save a lot of accommodation, as you will be taking care of someone else’s home (and pet) for them.
You can easily find houses to sit in major cities. Platforms like Trusted Housesitter are a great place to start looking.
Note that there will usually be a background check involved, and you will need to apply for numerous positions before you land one. If you are not good with animals, you should look for house-sitting jobs only.
Become a Travel Photographer
If you also enjoy photography or are at least keen to learn, you can pair up traveling with taking gorgeous photos of your destinations. You can then either sell them on stock photo websites or sell them to magazines and blogs.
Of course, you can also use them on your own blog if you choose to establish one.
There will be some learning involved if you are not already well-versed in taking high-quality photos. However, you can take a very quick course on platforms like Skillshare and learn the basics. The key will be to keep practicing as often as you can.
You can also take photos in your hometown or branch out and take non-travel-related photos, the proceeds of which you can use to fund your travels.
Become an Event Planner
If you are an organized person who likes to plan things, you can also become an event planner. You can both plan itineraries for your clients, and you can also plan events at a certain destination.
For starters, you can begin by organizing events locally to get a bit of experience under your belt and acquire some client testimonials. This will be great practice for hosting events elsewhere.
Consider the type of event you enjoy the most and that you’d be great at putting together. You can become a destination wedding planner, for example, or organize hen dos abroad.
You will need to partner up with lots of local businesses, like venues and restaurants. It can be a great way to meet new people, too!
Offer Guided Tours
If you’re great at talking to people, you can consider becoming a tour guide. You can again do this where you currently live, or you can travel to a destination you’ve already been to or have always wanted to visit.
There may be some certification involved, depending on where you want to run your tour guide business. At the very least, you will need to learn a lot about the location and its history. You should also tailor your tours to specific kinds of tourists. For example, you can take elementary school kids to museums, or you can do guided tours for seniors.
Be prepared to answer a lot of questions, and always have several recommendations for places to eat and shop at the ready.
Provide Location-Specific Guides
If you are very familiar with a destination, you can create location-specific guides, like e-books or video guides. This idea is directly tied to blogging and vlogging, but you can also sell your guides on other platforms.
The guide can target anything about a location: its cuisine or history, the best places to visit if you are a movie buff, etc.
You can also partner up with other businesses in the tourism sector and recommend them in exchange for a fee or discount.
Become a Travel Assistant
Finally, you can also become a personal travel assistant. This business idea is a combination of tour guide, travel agency, and personal assistant.
Your job will be to handle everything for someone who is traveling to a certain location. You will be the one who finds their accommodation and sets it up. You will be the one who arranges all the transportation details. You will arrange local tours, book meals, and take care of luggage.
You won’t be good at this career unless you’re very organized and patient and you know how to handle stressful situations. People who want to hire a travel assistant are usually very busy and very particular about what they want, so you will need to be ready for anything.
The good news is that you can have multiple clients at once. You can even travel with some of them and be there on the ground to help them out with any of their travel needs.
Wrapping Up
Which one of these suggestions do you like the most? Does any of them sound like something you would like to dive into?
Before you choose what kind of business to start, consider your current income and lifestyle. Don’t start investing in a new business before you are sure it’s a match for both.