9 best jobs for people who love travel

If you're mad about travelling, there are lots of great options. Tourism is going to bounce back in 2022, and over the last year, many roles and tasks have moved completely online. So, if a nomadic lifestyle works for you, it's never been easier to work remotely.

Hotel Management

International hotels offer careers that can span continents. When you work for a company like Hyatt, Marriott, IHG or Hilton, you can request to be assigned different roles in exotic locations all around the world. You also get perks like discounted stays at your employer’s hotels, eating in the restaurant, and the occasional night of luxury accommodation for free.

If you want a long term-career and you have a passion for entertaining guests in luxury environments, hotel management is a great choice for a mobile profession. Although hotel management does require formal training, it is a role where you can work your way up within a company relatively quickly, via a whole host of great leadership training programs. Plus, it’s in high demand, with a solid growth projection rate and an average salary of AUD$70,000. That’s a luxury international career.

Tour Guide

In most capital cities and at natural tourist attractions around the world there are tour companies offering guided tours of landmarks and museums in a range of different languages. If your native language is English or any of the other languages popularly spoken by tourists, you can fairly easily find work as a tour guide. This job is not for wallflowers; you need to enjoy public speaking, meeting people, being active and learning a lot about history.

Work on Cruise Ships

There are a huge range of jobs on cruise ships, and they all come with their own food, accommodation and a free ticket around the world, or at least around the Caribbean. Almost every job imaginable has a place on a cruise ship. Whether you’re a dancer, cook, comedian, shop assistant, casino dealer, stylist or audio technician, these giant floating hotel and entertainment complexes are always on the lookout for employees who don’t mind being on the water for most of the year.

If you want to get into the more senior management roles, however, you’re likely going to need some kind of training in hospitality management, or equivalent. That may sound like a lot of effort, but the senior management roles on a cruise ship can earn upwards of US$200,000 a year; so it’s definitely worth it.

Work Outdoors in Farming or Nature Conservation

If you are passionate about the environment and love nature, you might want to turn your focus to farming or conservation. There are lots of different ways you can incorporate outdoor work into travelling.

With organisations, such as WWOOF, you can volunteer on organic farms in exchange for food and a place to sleep. You can go get a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) at one of many locations worldwide and become a permaculture instructor.

In some countries that are reliant on migrant labour in agriculture, such as Australia, you can get a special extended visa as a backpacker doing paid farm work.

Plus, there are lots of different volunteer activities you can participate in, at conservation parks and reserves around the world. Conservation volunteering is also a great way to get a first-hand understanding of the relationship between nature conservation and tourism. Sustainable tourism is a fast-growing field, with lots of job opportunities expected for the future. With the right training you could have an exciting career in eco-tourism ahead of you.

Flight Attendant or Aviation Professional

Flight attendants: some of the most patient and the most well-travelled people in the world. It’s a tough job with strange hours, but you do get paid to fly all over the world with a group of workmates. Aviation itself is a big part of the tourism industry, which is fast growing worldwide, and accounts for a huge 10.2% of global GDP.

You might be surprised to know that there is currently a big shortage of aviation professionals across the board. One survey found that in the next 10 years 81% of airline companies expect growth in ground operations jobs, 70% expect growth in customer service jobs and 70% expect growth in cabin crew jobs.

So, although you might start your career as a flight attendant, with a degree in business, hospitality or tourism management you will quickly be promoted to senior roles within a huge international air travel brand. With a post-pandemic bounce back expected for the airline industry in 2022, Airlines are going to be on the hunt for trained professionals to fill these staff shortages.

Crew a yacht

Why not get paid to help sail someone else's yacht? There are people who own yachts and like to go to exotic locations, and pay other people to sail their boats.

Middle sized and luxury mega yachts are always looking for crew to manage and sail their vessels. They need captains and sailing crew, but they usually also need cooks and managers, too. You can also save quite a lot of money working on boats, because you’re earning without spending for months at a time.

Sports, Wellness or Activities Instructor

If fitness or wellness is your passion, you might want to consider taking this skill set and turning it into an international commodity. With some training and personal experience in your chosen field, you could work in lots of different fitness and wellness roles at any spa, hotel, summer camp, cruise ship, ski resort or wellness retreat around the world.

Yoga instructor, masseur, personal trainer, surfing or skiing instructor, aerobics leader, scuba diving instructor: these are all roles commonly found at resorts and in some pretty fantastic locations.

The sports and activities roles are also a great way to step up into a longer-term career in tourism. A lot of tourism graduates spend time working as activities directors in hotels or resorts, before working their way up within the tourism industry.

Travel Content Creator

Lots of travel bloggers online say the best way to make money while travelling is to make a travel vlog or blog. They might make it sound easy, but it requires some skills and training in writing, content, video and photo editing and social media. If you do want to start your own YouTube channel, create travel content or become a digital nomad Instagram influencer, start by doing a bit of self-teaching.

Whether you end up getting paid enough to live off from your blogging or vlogging projects, you can always use the skills you learn by doing it to start doing your own freelance content creation work, or to even move on to a career in tourism and destination marketing. A content creation project can lead to a lot of unexpected places.

Bar or Restaurant Management

As the saying goes, people always need to eat. No matter where you are in the world, what your skill set, or what the economic situation is like, you can almost always be sure of a job as a chef, dishwasher or bartender. Just before the pandemic, the global travel, tourism and hospitality industry employed roughly 10% of the entire world's working population. 

With the small exception of a global pandemic, bars, hotels and restaurants in every country are always open and always looking for trained management staff. In fact, now that the global economy is bouncing back from COVID-19, in many countries there’s a shortage of hospitality workers.

The great thing about working in this sector is that you can start out waiting or working front of house and work your way up into a senior role fairly quickly. Who knows where it may lead. With some experience and a course in hospitality management, your holiday bar job in Italy could be the beginning of your career as a professional restaurateur.