Written by: Colleen O'Neill Mulvihill, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
You’ve likely never heard of travel coaching. If so, you’re not alone. In this article, a certified transformational wellness travel coach introduces us to the profession and discusses how everyone could benefit from hiring one.
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t grow up traveling the world. As a child of the 70s and 80s in suburban Baltimore, our family traveled by car three hours east to Ocean City, Maryland, once or twice a year for our family vacation. We also spent a few years camping in the mountains of western Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Our family went to Disney World once and was blessed with the occasional long weekend at Deep Creek Lake. All in all, our traveling as a family never took us that far from home. My parents worked blue-collar jobs and never traveled abroad. It was, by all accounts, the typical middle-class American upbringing.
Fast-forward slightly. I was a young mom and a career firefighter, so traveling still wasn’t on my radar screen. Day-to-day life took precedence between shift work, raising babies, household chores, and making ends meet. I was in my twenties before I boarded an airplane for the first time. My best friend from high school had moved from Maryland to Arizona, and my husband surprised me with a plane ticket to visit her.
I remember that moment of panic like it was yesterday. I was petrified to fly. I remember wondering if the plane would crash or if I would make it back home to my son. My mind was filled with ‘what ifs’ that weren’t based on any reality other than my own inexperience. Because my family didn’t have experience flying across the country either, I didn’t have anyone in my world who knew enough to talk me through it.
As I white-knuckled my way through my first flying experience, I wondered if other people felt scared to fly or travel alone. On the plane, I remember thinking how everyone else seemed to know exactly what they were doing. I wondered if I looked as lost and terrified as I felt.
Because you’re reading this now, you know that I survived and made it back home to talk about it. I didn’t realize it then, but this experience, along with many other travel experiences over the years since, would help pave the way for me to create my own wellness and travel coaching business, the Holistic Health Traveler.
What is a travel coach?
Travel coaches are a relatively new branch of the coaching tree. Like other coaching styles, a travel coach starts with understanding the client's needs and desires - their starting point. In my story above, the starting point at the time was to know how to navigate an airport, what to expect on the plane, how to pack, and what I could and couldn’t take – the basics.
For someone who has never experienced air, train, or cruise ship travel before, getting a sense of what to expect or a lay of the land, if you will, makes the traveler feel more inclined to relax and embrace the possibilities of self-transformation like increased self-esteem, courage, and worthiness. Fear can keep so many people from traveling and experiencing the best things in life, so having a professional to talk to can open a whole new world to them.
Yet, it’s not only first-time travelers that can be bolstered by hiring a travel coach.
Travel coaching is for everyone
Even experienced travelers will tell you that they sometimes feel disappointed after a trip, citing they spent way too much money on a journey that left them feeling like they needed a vacation from their vacation. Or worse yet, they think the experience was so underwhelming they wondered why they bothered going in the first place. Which begs the question, “Why did you go?”
When a person feels the need to “get away,” it is essential to uncover why. This is what’s known as a travel driver. What drives someone to want to book a trip? Are they so stressed with their day-to-day lives that they want a profoundly relaxing experience? Or are they feeling a sense of curiosity about a particular culture or cuisine? Do they feel so trapped by their life in the city that they want to go to a place where they can significantly impact a small rural community?
A recent travel trends report revealed that travelers across all generations are looking for rest and relaxation in 2024. Knowing what that looks like for the individual is critical to designing a perfect getaway. Millennials will likely want to experience their R&R differently than a Baby Boomer.
The reasons for wanting to travel are as individual as the person. Yet sometimes, scouring the internet for travel deals and finding a hundred options leaves us more confused than ever. This is where a travel coach shines.
Hiring a travel coach
When you hire a travel coach, you are hiring someone who will help guide you to make the right decision for YOU. Just as a life coach doesn’t design your life for you but instead guides you toward making the decisions that will lead you to the life of your dreams, a travel coach doesn’t choose or book travel for you.
A travel coach is NOT the same as a travel agent. Coaches' interests lie in helping their clients design a travel experience that matches their desired outcome and leads the traveler toward a transformation – or end goal of some sort.
Have you ever heard someone say that a travel experience “changed them?” Understanding what change is desired on the front end, then coaching the client toward uncovering their deeper why is what travel coaching is all about. Think of it as a layer of life coaching culminating in a travel experience.
Whether the desired outcome is as simple as navigating through an airport on your own for the first time or as transformative as immersing yourself in another culture to build your self-esteem, travel coaches can help you get there.
Wellness travel coaching
Have you ever considered travel as a means to regain control of your health or overall well-being? Our current home environment is one of the biggest challenges in creating healthier habits. We become so accustomed to living our lives with routine – whether good or bad – that we often struggle when we want to change our habits.
Escaping from our home environment to a wellness destination where healthy meals, yoga classes, quiet time for meditation, and outdoor activities are a daily routine can catapult us toward embracing these daily habits when we return home.
Not all wellness destinations align with individual health goals, though. It is essential to keep your priorities in mind when creating a trip with the most benefits. A spa vacation in Tahiti may sound incredibly relaxing, but it could lack support for someone wishing to learn how to cook healthier meals at home to lose weight.
Discussing your health goals with a wellness travel coach can help you adjust your expectations to line up an experience worthy of your time and money, allowing for optimum habit change. Upon returning home, a follow-up session with your travel coach can solidify your new routine by unpacking what you learned and how you’ll integrate new habits into your environment.
Contact me if you want to learn more about how wellness travel can help you create healthier habits and propel you toward your health goals. You can find more about my coaching services here.
Colleen O'Neill Mulvihill, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Colleen O'Neill Mulvihill spent 30 years as a career firefighter, where she developed a passion for holistic health, wellness, and nutrition. During that time, she became a trusted collegue, often coaching other firefighters toward healthier habits. After retirement, she continued coaching and developed a passion for traveling. Combining her two loves, she now coaches on transformation, mindset, and all things wellness travel. Her mission: Helping women to find their mind, body, and soul connection.
