A Good Travel Job
 

I'm reading so much of how many of you travelled to so many places. Just wanting to know if there are some jobs that can give one the opportunity to travel and see the world.
Can anyone direct me to a good travel job?

I have worked as a travel agent in Italy for more than five years and from my own experience I can tell you that wrking as a travel agent sometimes there are workshops organised by tour operators especially for travel agents. Their purpose is to show them the hotels owned by the tour operator. These workshops are FREE for travel agents which is great.
As a travel agent you can also ask some tour operator you have been worked with a lot, some special net fares for travel agents, when you want to go on (your) holiday. I did so when I went to Paris twice, got a good discounted fare.
Other than that, other jobs that could allow you to travel are: tour guides, working in some large all inclusive hotel or Hotel Clubs like Clud Med, Kuoni and so forth. It is a temporary job and usually you need to have a kind of skill like swimming licence (and get a job as a swimming instructor), windsurfing (and get a job as windsurf instructor), tennis, golf, or be a dance teacher, or be able at entertaining the hotel guests in the various activities organised daily at the Hotel Club...etc...

Foreign correspondent, diplomat, worker for a development aid charity, manager in the kind of company (Citibank or BP)in which careers have to be structured on multinational experience, sourcing manager for an apparel retailer, doctor in Medicins sans Frontieres...

Offhand, I'm struggling to think of a profession that doesn't offer scope for copious international travel, as long as you remember that 90% or more of that profession is practised outside your country.

Jobs where you really interact with the real world, rather than with tourists, get you to see the world and understand how it works. And see the sites at times the crowds aren't there.

I'd argue that they're all a lot more rewarding than shepherding tour parties around. But they're uncontestably better paid.

PS: Tony Blair aside, the people who really travel round the world most are the ones you meet in Business Class lounges, who rack up astonishing amounts of global travel on business.

What do they do? All sorts of things.

To find out, go to www.flyertalk.com, go to the boards for the airlines that do almost nothing but international flights, like BA, Lufthansa, Cathay and Singapore, and post a message asking them what job they do that gets them around the world so much.

Hi Princess

>..jobs that can give one the opportunity to travel and see the world. <

Your local Army and Navy recruiting centers will be happy to help.

In our case, my husband and I own a small business (but I also teach full time)and get to travel to trade shows in Europe and elsewhere several times a year!

But, I also know folks who travel and teach conversational English to adults and college students. You can do this in countries where people want to brush up on the English they learned in elem school. They see English as a valuable language and want to practice it. You usually do not have to speak the native language of the country you are visiting.

Now, the friends I know do this as volunteers from their church, but others DO get paid. If you travel around and read signs and ads and menus, you can see that some countries need help with English usage! It is at times humorous, but I have helped friends in Thailand fix their signs to make them more clear.

I also am dipping into travel writing. I've done some, but it isn't a paying job just yet! I'll be retiring from teaching in June and will have more time to try my luck.

There are some good answers here, and if you actually want some meaningful advice here - - broken record, I know, here I go again - - you have to provide "US" a little more information about you and what you mean.

Let's start with what you mean: several of the posts above have touched on this. Do you mean that you are "physically traveling" - - i.e., actually in transit often? and possibly as a corollary, going to a diverse number of places? I think that a senior flight attendant who flies a lot of overseas routes might make 60-80 international trips (or maybe fewer, with some domestic routes mixed in). In many cases, these will allow 24-48 hours abroad, though that could mean as little as 4-16 hours of time for dining or personal activities in the foreign location. And of course, there will be a lot of repeats to a handful of destinations (with some notable exceptions, I can imagine). You don't say whether you want to move or not, but I think that travel opportunities might be greatst if you were located some place where the largest number of flights are overseas: for example, Hawaii or any other island, or a small country like Denmark or Israel.

Of course that might not be what you mean at all. The careers that put people abroad, or "on the road" the most make a FEW trips that take them away for many weeks or months at a time. In her book, "Naked in Baghdad", Anne Gerrols made three trips in a year, I think - - totaling 150 nights away (some where she had no electricity or running hot/cold water).

In the middle are careers that might take you "away" 6, 10 or 20 times a year, for 2-7 days at a stretch. I had a job like that once. I started my own company; I don't think I could have landed such a job employed by someone else to take on such a role - - and I made a personal decision to incorporate as much as 10-20 days/year away on purely personal time. This was essentially time stolen - - from both my family and from my gainful employment. I never had any regrets about it, but it is not a decision that many self-employed people can/will make.

No doubt there are similar jobs in sales and company/account "reps" that could give you a similar travel profile. First and foremost, you would have to be good at conducting that element of the company's business. And it would almost certainly take time to be offered such a position. Jobs that "travel a lot" look very "glamorous" (especially to those who never actually endure th "hardships" of being a "road warrior"), and thus they are considered prestigious and usually pretty competitively sought.

Which takes us to the second half of the equation: who are you? what do you do now? and what could you reasonably learn to do? What is your time horizon for wanting to pursue this vocational move?

I think that genuine career advice is a little too personal to really take place in this open public setting - - but in generalities, it could make for a nice change of pace from "what hotel in Rome?" And then, you might find a few people with whom ongoing personal corrspondence could lead you closer to the right door(s).

Best wishes,

Rex

Ira-that is true. We traveled the world thanks to a career in the Army. And it was a good life !

My chemical engineering degree put me in jobs that required travel all over the USA and to 3 other continents, plus multi-year company paid transfers to Holland and Germany.

Rex -

You're correct. There are sub-sets of many diferent careers that allow for significant travel - the problem is that they are rarely at the entry level and by the time most people have come that far in their career they have family situations that can make the travel a very mixed blessing. I think Princess needs to be much more specific about what she does now/what skill sets she has/where she lives etc before people can provide even directional guidance.

For example, if she's a cook perhaps she should get a job on a cruise ship, or can transfer those skills to a restaurant in another country. If she's in publishing perhaps she needs to transfer to a large company with a significant global portfolio. How can we tell at this point?

Thank you very much for answering me. I work as a Teacher's Aide and have been for 14 years. It's very possible for me to retire with an incentive deal, but I think our budget will not allow it. If I did, however, I thought it would be nice to get some type of job in the travel industry. I really don't have the skills for it, unless I go to school for them. My husband will still be working when, and if, I retire.
I may be too old for a flight attendant, (I'm 58 years old, but people say I look a lot younger!) What
would a courier do?
I know that I could really do some research, but I do like the answers/suggustions people give on this site. And, I have taken a lot of suggestions on my past vacations. Why this was the forum where the Locando Barbarigo was suggested as a place to stay in Venice. :)

So, it sounds like you would prefer to actually travel (that is, be on the move, and come home a lot - - like a flight attendant). I honestly do not know anything about being a courier. Do people actually make a "living" (i.e., more than $10,000 a year) doing this?

Could your husband pick up and go with you for a year? I think your best shot is to scour the ads (but I don't really know where these would be placed) for jobs, offered by American or multi-national companies who want English-speaking Americans to work in "Americanized" environments. For example, there may be a variety of jobs in Saudi Arabia. It may not be what you have in mind - - and it might put the two of you behind financially (and depending on your husbands' career, might be out of the question) - - but it is a lot better than giving up income altogether (some of these jobs in Saudi Arabia pay very well) - - and you might have weekends and vacation periods that you could see a lot of Europe or Africa or Asia.

As much as anything, I think few people figured that "princess" would be 58 years old. Great self image!

I wonder if I will think of myself as a prince eight years from now?

As the wife of a diplomat, I suggest a career in the foreign service. You won't be limited to policy work -- diplomats and doctors, nurses and secretaries, carpenters and computer specialists are all needed. Living overseas is a requirement of the job, and as for travelling... it's up to you to make the most of your opportunities! Imagine christmas in Thailand, or Presidents' Day in Moscow! Check out www.state.gov for more information.