What does travelling teach you?

The best education you can ever have

As a child holidays consisted of staying in a caravan on the South Downs.

My parents were both teachers so we spent six weeks there in the summer. These were some of my happiest memories. I learnt to walk on the beach (or so I’m told) and walked straight into the sea. I have loved the sea ever since.

Since then, my travels have become far more exotic but they‘ve never really been about lying on a sun lounger for hours on end. I’ve always been far more interested in discovering new places, understanding history, and learning about different cultures.

And most of what travel has taught me hasn’t come from guidebooks or museums; it’s come from work.

Cultural differences in business

I spent most of my career in the travel industry, and it gave me an education I could never have got any other way.

Working internationally taught me far more about communication, cultural nuance, expectations, and human behaviour than any textbook ever could.

Early in my career, I worked in the hotel industry and was responsible for negotiating with overseas tour operators bringing business into the UK. My first overseas trip was to Berlin in 1989, for a major trade show.

The Berlin Wall was coming down.

I was travelling with my German colleague. When we crossed into East Berlin, she went through the Brandenburg Gate and I went through Checkpoint Charlie. The contrast was stark.

I returned a few years later in the late 1990s to contract accommodation in East Berlin, and very little had changed. Then last year, I went back again with my daughter. It was completely unrecognisable.

That experience stayed with me. It was a powerful reminder that change takes time until suddenly, it happens all at once.

International Culture

I eventually left the hotel industry when I was offered an incredible opportunity to join STA Travel, a student travel specialist best known at the time for round-the-world flights.

I was recruited to set up a brand new business unit offering budget accommodation to students and young travellers when they arrived at their first destination. (I suspect the demand came more from anxious parents than the students themselves, especially as this was all pre-mobile phones!)

I built that business to a $10m turnover with a team of 10 and travelled the world in the process.

I wasn’t just contracting accommodation in gateway cities across the globe; I was also building relationships with international divisions of the company in the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and Switzerland.

One of my biggest trips, over three weeks, took me to Los Angeles, Auckland, Sydney, Hong Kong and Delhi with a side trip to the Taj Mahal. I visited almost every European capital, many US cities, and many places that felt completely different from anything I’d known before.

Tokyo was my favourite, and I will be returning...

What those years taught me was this: success internationally, just like success in business comes from listening, adapting, and respecting different ways of doing things.

Pausing, then starting again

After five years, it was time to move on. It was a very hard act to follow, so I took a year out to complete an MBA before founding my first business; a tour operator specialising in rail travel.

My first task was negotiating a contract with Eurostar. Then came hotel contracts in Paris. And then we launched.

Twelve years later, that business had grown to £8m with a team of 25.

Our best-selling holiday was Venice via the Alps; often travelling on the Orient Express. Venice is my favourite city in Europe, and arriving by train, then by boat, at a beautiful hotel is hard to beat.

What travel ultimately taught me

Looking back, travelling taught me far more than geography.

It taught me balance.

It taught me that there is no single definition of success. That pace matters. That ambition looks different at different stages of life. And those rigid plans rarely survive real life.

These lessons sit at the heart of how I coach female founders today.

Some women want fast growth, bigger teams, and bold expansion. Others want a profitable, well-run business that supports flexibility, family, or freedom.

Neither is wrong.

My role as a coach isn’t to push someone towards my version of success; it’s to help them clarify their vision and build a business that supports it.

Just like travel, business works best when you have a clear direction but with the flexibility to adapt as you go. And just like travel, having the right guide alongside you can make the journey more confident, enjoyable, and sustainable.

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